atw: Re: Time for another debate?

Oh sorry, I obviously read your original post a bit carelessly (and I wasn't
even drinking claret).

On the topic of gerunds, etc, I'm a bit reluctant to get into detailed
discussion as this isn't a linguistics list, but since you ask I'll have a
go. It'd probably be more accurate to say that 'entering transactions' is a
noun phrase. It can be used as the subject of a verb (e.g. in 'entering
transactions is a key activity') or in many other ways just like a noun.
However, you can also analyse the internal structure of the phrase and it's
clear from the meaning that 'transactions' is the direct object of
'entering', which is a non-finite form of the verb 'enter' and can have
objects like a regular (finite) verb. If 'entering' were adjectival (which
is what's usually implied when the term 'present participle' is used), then
it would modify the meaning of 'transactions' and the whole phrase would be
about transactions rather than the process of entering them. (This
interpretation might be appropriate, for example, if you were using the
phrase to distinguish transactions going into a system (the entering
transactions) from those going out, say.)

So just as you can form a noun (the gerund 'entering') from the verb
'enter', you can form a noun phrase from the phrase 'enter transactions', by
again adding the -ing and importing the direct object unchanged. You can
also form a noun phrase from something much more complicated, such as
'enter complex transactions received from an external system', in the same
way.

Traditional grammar of the sort I learnt at school seems to try always to
bring everything down to the level of individual words, but in practice
language doesn't work like that. We naturally construct sentences out of
whole phrases just as much as we do out of words, and sentences are often
better analysed into phrases first. Another well-known example is a phrase
like 'the man next door's dog' - here the 's needs to be viewed as an
inflection applied to the whole phrase 'man next door', as the dog obviously
doesn't belong to the door.
So do I consider the word 'entering' in 'entering transactions' a noun? That
was your question and I haven't answered it. I'm not sure if I can, but I
hope what I've said indicates that I think it's of little interest in
analysing the structure of the sentence.

Does all this have anything to do with your original question? Well,
probably not.

But at least you got a debate - of sorts.

Howard

2009/5/24 Geoffrey Marnell <geoffrey@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>

>  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: 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: 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: www.abelard.com.au
>>
>>
>
>
>

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