"using" as a verb in a task heading?

[Geoff Hart <ghart -at- videotron -dot- ca>]

Milan Davidovic wondered: <<Let's say you have a task -- for  
demonstration purposes only, we'll call it Verbing the Noun. There  
are two ways of verbing the noun, so one could construct headings as  
follows:
Verbing the Noun
    Using Method A
    Using Method B
As I was taught in my initial training, "using" is a poor choice for  
a verb in a task heading (sound familiar? or is this just me?). In  
this case, though, it may be okay. What do you think?>>

The reason to avoid "using" is that it's not very specific. There is  
often a stronger verb (printing, saving, deleting) that does the job  
better. If you only have one "using" in a list, it's not a problem.  
The problem comes when there are many. In that case, all the headings  
look the same (they all start with "Using"), plus, when you try to  
alphabetize them, they all sort together instead of having "Deleting"  
appear under D and "Saving" appear under S. It's annoying enough that  
you should avoid this.

In your specific example, the question is what the two methods  
actually are. For example, if Method A is "using a thesaurus" and  
Method B is "using a dictionary", the better solution might be  
"Thesaurusing the noun into a verb" and "Dictionarying the noun into  
a verb". (OK, really not... <g> but this is all hypothetical until  
you provide actual examples.)

If everything appears together on a single page, or as expanding/ 
collapsing subheads in the tree diagram for a help topic, you might  
be able to get away with nothing more than "Method A". The main  
heading remains visible, so it's not necessary to repeat it.

----------------------------------------------------
-- Geoff Hart
ghart -at- videotron -dot- ca / geoffhart -at- mac -dot- com
www.geoff-hart.com
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