Hi Parker,
I think the defaulting of prompts for dictionary fields has been in since NT4 or thereabouts.
However it didn't default the prompt for local variables - which is wrong because it just means more work for you when you're putting variables on a form.
The "correct" way to set a prompt (or comment for that matter) to be blank is to just put 2 single quotes in the field. This is also true for any of
the other default settings - like tip, picture and so on.
I understand this is somewhat not "backwards compatible" - but unfortunately I can't tell between an "old field" when upgrading and a new field when creating a new column. So alas it is what it is.
In your case you'll need to "set" the prompts you want blank to be ''
Cheers
Bruce