atw: Re: Time for another debate?
- From: "Geoffrey Marnell" <geoffrey@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <austechwriter@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sun, 24 May 2009 19:54:18 +1000
Thanks for your input Howard.
Just to clarify the issue I initially raised: it is chapter headings I am
curious about. I'm not fussed about infinitives and present participles in
the titles of sections and procedures.
Yes, the claret got in the way: I meant to write that a gerund is a nouned
verb, not, obviously, a nouned noun (a correction I made in a later email).
But I am surprised, Howard, to see that you consider "entering" in "entering
transactions" to be a noun rather than a present participle. In the sentence
"She is entering transactions", is "entering"a noun? All I see is {pronoun +
verb + present participle + plural noun}. "Entering" is obviously a noun in
"the entering of transactions" (being a red-blushed gerund) as "singing' is
in "The singing of songs". But if someone was asked "What ere you doing?"
and they answered "Singing songs", would the answer be a cluster of two
nouns?
There's life in the old list yet.
Cheers
Geoffrey Marnell
Principal Consultant
Abelard Consulting Pty Ltd
T: +61 3 9596 3456
F: +61 3 9596 3625
W: <http://www.abelard.com.au/> www.abelard.com.au
_____
From: austechwriter-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:austechwriter-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Howard Silcock
Sent: Sunday, May 24, 2009 4:52 PM
To: austechwriter@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: atw: Re: Time for another debate?
I agree with Geoffrey. I use indexes all the time and curse books that don't
have them. The example he gives illustrates well the main reason they're
often more useful than a table of contents. Here's another example. Many
years ago I bought a copy of Collins Australian Encyclopedia. It had some
good articles, but the compilers made a big feature of explaining how they'd
organised the subject index, breaking it down under headings and
subheadings, instead of using the traditional alphabetical organisation. To
me that was just crazy, for essentially the reasons Geoffrey explained. In
the letter I wrote to the publisher, I imagined a visitor to Australia
wanting to find out about quokkas. He could well have no idea whether a
quokka was an animal, a plant, or even a native dance, so where on earth
would he look for the article? Even if he knew it was an animal, he would
find no heading Animals but would have to search through till he found
Natural History, Zoology. Then he would have to search all the subheadings:
will it be under Amphibians, or Aquatic and Marine Animals, or Birds, or
Fishes, or ...? Eventually he'd find it under Mammals, but it could well
have been under a heading Marsupials - no-one except the compiler would know
how the subjects were grouped. So, yes - I definitely favour indexes,
provided they're well designed. (Oh, by the way, Collins didn't even reply
to my letter!)
In answer to Geoffrey's original question, I admit I quite like headings
using a present participle. One of the pieces of advice in Strunk and White
that I like is to 'write using verbs' - it was stupidly criticised by Pullum
in the review Geoffrey mentioned here recently, but the general idea behind
it is that verbs generally produce a more vivid mental picture than nouns,
as they are usually associated with an activity rather than something
static. (I mentioned this in The Editor's Blacklist, under Nominalisation -
see http://members.iinet.net.au/~howard.silcock/checklist.html.) Of course,
if we're being pedantic, the word 'entering' in 'Entering bookings' isn't a
verb, but a noun formed from a verb (in fact, it is a gerund, whatever
Geoffrey may tell you). However, it still derives some strength from being
associated with an activity. (By the way, Geoffrey, what do you mean by
saying a gerund is formed from a noun? A gerund is a noun formed from a
verb, though I don't think people use the term very much these days. And
both 'the entering of bookings' and 'entering bookings' are examples of
gerunds. 'Entering' is a noun in both cases, but because it's derived form a
verb, it can have a direct object too, in the second case, which most nouns
can't.)
Recently I've been writing headings for actual procedures using phrases like
'Divert all your calls to Voicemail' and 'Make an external call' (from a
phone user manual), which my colleague preferred to 'To divert all your
calls to Voicemail', etc, which was what I originally said. However, I still
grouped the procedures under section headings like 'Making calls' and
'Receiving calls'. But does anyone ever reads these section headings? Well,
I just don't know. But there is a detailed index. And I also put in a list
at the front to give the reader some idea what these phones allow you to do
- they have special features that let you send text messages or make a call
by typing a person's name instead of a phone number. After all, readers
aren't likely to look up how to do something unless they're aware that it's
possible.
Howard
_____
From: austechwriter-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:austechwriter-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Geoffrey Marnell
Sent: Sunday, 24 May 2009 12:20 PM
To: austechwriter@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: atw: Re: Time for another debate?
Hi Caz,
I share your distaste for the silly repetitiveness in business writing. It's
also common in technical writing: "In [software name] there are five reports
you can use to manage a stocktake." Yes, I know it's in [software name].
That's what's on the front cover of the guide! And "Table of
Contents".Crikey, we don't call the index a Table of Index, so why write
"Table of Contents" rather than just Contents? So many wasted words, So much
wasted time, So many wasted resources.
But your first point is interesting, and I'd be keen to hear from other
austechies on the subject. Except in online help systems, most contents
sections rarely go below second-level headings, and few ever go to the level
of providing task-based information. Maybe you've been lucky with your user
guides and the contents section has taken you straight to what you want. But
I'd be surprised if that was a common experience. Suppose, for example. I
wanted to learn how to warp type in Photoshop. If I relied on the contents
section, I'd first have to flick though the contents looking for a chapter
on type (which happens to be on on the fifth page of the version 6 user
guide). I then you have to scan the eight entries under "Using Type" for one
that seems to have something to do with warping. There isn't a heading that
specifically mentions warping, so I opt for the section that seems the
closest: "Formatting characters" on page 258. I trudge off to page 258, scan
the seven pages in that section and find nothing on warping text.
Information on warping is actually on page 256, in a section called "Working
with type layers". I could have discovered that immediately by going to the
index and seeing the sub-head "warping type" under the keyword "Type". Going
to the index first would have saved me a lot of time.
If having to go to the index is an indication of a poor contents section, as
you suggest, then we would need to radically rethink the purpose of a
contents section. It would have to have much more depth than most currently
do, so much so that it would have to become more like an index ... in which
case, why not just use the index?
Austechies: when you are searching for specific material in a user guide, or
in any non-fiction book, do you prefer to find it in the contents section or
the index? (I'm talking here about specific information, not just general
information that is not immediately relevant to the task at hand. (How to
warp type, not just stuff about type, for instance.)
Cheers
Geoffrey Marnell
Principal Consultant
Abelard Consulting Pty Ltd
T: +61 3 9596 3456
F: +61 3 9596 3625
W: <http://www.abelard.com.au/> www.abelard.com.au
_____
From: austechwriter-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:austechwriter-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Caz.H
Sent: Saturday, May 23, 2009 2:34 PM
To: austechwriter@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: atw: Re: Time for another debate?
1. I read the content pages (chapter titles), always. If I have to go to
an index to find the information I need from a plain old user manual then
they've done a poor job of the titles as well as the chapter content. The
exception is recipe books.
2. Yes, the traditional heading form is redundant. Very often not even
accurate, as you've noted. One could get quite pedantic (which I'm rather
inclined to do) about "using reports", for example, since the guide has yet
to be written for instructing anyone on how to "use" reports. At best, user
manuals tell people how to generate and present reports. The uses to which
reports are put, or not, is a more mysterious matter.
3. I have to confess that I get rather rabid about headings, as used in the
wider world of business. For example, when I see "Table of Contents" I tend
to start foaming at the mouth. The consequences are much the same when I
see a heading such as "Purpose", following by a sentence that begins "The
purpose of this document ..."; or "Audience" ..."The audience for this
document is ... " Arrrrhhhhhhh!
See Geoffrey, there are bigger, more mind numbing, fish to fry when it comes
to superfluous verbiage in business.
User manuals are probably the more innocent party, since most people never
look at them again once they walk out of a training room, therefore, the
damage is minimized.
C.H
On Sat, May 23, 2009 at 1:57 PM, Geoffrey Marnell <geoffrey@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
Hi austechies,
This list has gone deadly quiet of late, so how about a new debate? What
about one on the format of chapter titles in user guides.
Although not universally the practice, it seems that most technical writers
(TWs) cannot resist constructing chapter titles in the form {present
participle + noun}. For example:
* Entering bookings
* Using reports
* Working with tables
The first word in these examples is a present participle (the -ing form of
an underlying verb: enter, use and work). Some folk call these introductory
words gerunds, but gerunds, although also taking an -ing ending, are formed
from nouns, not from verbs. The gerund equivalents of the examples given
above are "The entering of bookings", "The using of reports" and so on.)
Happily, TWs don't use the excruciating gerund form for chapter titles, but
why do we feel the need to include the present participle? Why don't we just
call these chapters:
* Bookings
* Reports
* Tables
I've asked a couple of senior TWs this question and their view is that an
action word in the title makes it clear that the chapter is telling us how
to do things, not just giving us facts. But the fact that the entire
document is called a user guide or user manual is already telling us that it
is primarily about how to do things, namely, using a product. It might have
some referential material in it (say, a list of error messages) but such
material has a traditional and expected place in a user guide: in the
appendixes. Referential material goes into appendixes; procedural material
goes into chapters. That's been traditional publishing practice for yonks.
No TW following standard practice sandwiches a chapter of referential
material between two chapters of procedural material. Hence there doesn't
seem to be a need for any special flag in the title of a chapter to tell the
reader that this particular chapter is about how to do things. The context,
and traditional publishing practice, says it all.
So the {present participle + noun} form seems unnecessarily verbose in a
user guide. (What does "Working with tables" tell you that "Tables"
doesn't?) Further, it forces the TW into either truncated specialisation
(calling a chapter "Entering bookings" when it is also about changing,
cancelling and printing bookings) or imprecise abstraction (what does
"using" or "working with" really mean?: just doing things with?). In a
manual that is primarily about how to do things, it seems a waste to keep
reminding the reader that a chapter is about how to do things.
Moreover, does anyone actually read chapter titles? I doubt if more than a
few do. The way a typical user typically uses a user guide is to consult the
index and then jump straight to the topic or task they need help with. A
chapter title is at most a blur during thumbing. Why, then, do we fuss over
something that most uses never read and, for those who do, the meaning would
be quite clear without any leading participle or participle phrase?
So, is there any logic to our practice of naming chapters in the {present
participle + noun} form? Or do we do it simply because we have always done
it?
Let the games begin.
Geoffrey Marnell
Principal Consultant
Abelard Consulting Pty Ltd
T: +61 3 9596 3456
F: +61 3 9596 3625
W: <http://www.abelard.com.au/> www.abelard.com.au
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