Re: techwr-l digest: March 27, 2002
Even if they use on index search or a text search, they will get lots of
matches on some gerunds used many times.
For example the gerunds maintaining, performing, processing, and exploring
appear numerous times. And these gerunds don't really show the user the real
activity they are looking for.
I have no problems with gerunds in titles of topics, and some of the suggestions for breaking things up into How To's and Concepts sound good. But in the topic's indexing, you should try to limit the number of gerunds that appear as main entries, since it will lead to the very problem you are talking about -- an index where everything appears under "adding" or "copying" or worst of all, "creating." You can set tools to automatically copy the topic title as an index entry, but I always delete those title entries. Try indexing instead with the most important words as the main entries, and limiting the gerunds you use in indexing to absolute essentials, like "saving" or "printing." Words like "exploring" are not good pointers, even though they make good topic headings.
Although your topic titles serve as locators and distinguishing elements when they appear in the "topics found" dialog box, they usually do not work verbatim as index entries. Your index can reflect a more direct approach.
Jan Wright
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Wright Information Indexing Services
Jancw -at- wrightinformation -dot- com
www.wrightinformation.com
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