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I am developing a sort of recruitment app. It shows potential candidates.

Currently there is a button which toggles, when clicked between "Show/Hide X unemployed candidates".

I added a date range slider, and want to make the button text refer to the date range. E.g. from 2010 to 2020 there might be 30 unemployed candidates, but from 2018 to 2020, only 4.

I am trying to succinctly say "Hide/Show X candidates who are/were unemployed during the selected date range".

How can I phrase it tersely, but still convey that meaning?

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    This question relates to user interface design and logic rather than to English usage. Why conflate the two issues in one instruction? In particular, why confuse the user with a choice of date range when all they wish to do is hide unemployed? The dates of hidden candidates are of no interest to a user.
    – Anton
    Commented Aug 25, 2020 at 9:55
  • Well, I was thinking of asking on User Experience, but consider this to be the more appropriate site. The show / hide button just toggles candidates' home locations on a map. Which shows a lot of other things. Which can also be shown/hidden by a toggle button. Without going into the whole app, or justifying features or design, I am simply looking for a shorter to text to encapsulate " Show/hide the home locations of these guys, of which there are X unemployed, according to the date range slider".
    – Mawg
    Commented Aug 25, 2020 at 10:08
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    Ok, I have suggested accordingly. Not an easy problem for you, I agree. :)
    – Anton
    Commented Aug 25, 2020 at 10:33
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    Is the X merely the display of the number of candidates found to be unemployed during the period covered by the date range? I'm a bit confused. As a suggestion you could replace "date range" with "period". it's a lot less clumsy.
    – BoldBen
    Commented Aug 25, 2020 at 10:48
  • Yes, X is a number. Hmm, "period" sounds nice. Trouble is, I would still want to say "selected period", to remind the user that he selects what the period is.
    – Mawg
    Commented Aug 25, 2020 at 11:28

1 Answer 1

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First, many so-called toggles are in the form of a checkbox, and their descriptive text is only for "show," "display," "enable," or any other such positive action, when the control is selected.

The descriptive text of a checkbox doesn't describe the opposite effect occurring when it is deselected, so there is no reason to do so here either.

Since the slider that lets you select the year will also describe a date range, there is no reason to add that to the text that comes before it.

The following is a shortened, but still understandable, version of the controls and descriptive text:

  • [x] Show candidates who were unemployed (no selection).
  • [x] Show candidates who were unemployed (2018–2020).
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  • I like this very much! (althoguh, I am terniding towards "Show/Hide unemployment candidates (2018–2020)" for brevity.
    – Mawg
    Commented Aug 25, 2020 at 14:37
  • @MawgsaysreinstateMonica Note that unemployment candidates means candidates for unemployment (people eligible for unemployment). That's not the meaning you want to convey. The longer (but more accurate) version is candidates who were unemployed.
    – Jason Bassford
    Commented Aug 25, 2020 at 14:58
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    @MawgsaysreinstateMonica I've actually updated my answer with that last version.
    – Jason Bassford
    Commented Aug 25, 2020 at 15:06
  • And I have accepted your excellent answer :-)
    – Mawg
    Commented Aug 25, 2020 at 18:37

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