: Re: Verb tense for technical document titles I'm writing a technical manual about creating database systems, and wondered what is the best verb tense for title names. My ideas are: Continuous (-ing)

@BetL639

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It's often a matter of house style, if you are working with a publisher, and the style can vary within the same publisher, depending on the series. I've written many books for Peachpit Press, and they have two popular series with different styles. For example, imagine you were writing a book on PowerPoint (as I have). In their Visual QuickStart Guide series, I wrote "Creating a Slide." In their Visual QuickProject series, the task was "Create a Slide." Both series of books are step-by-step instructions, and I found that either form works. The Imperative tends to take up a bit less space in the header, which was important in the QuickProject series design.

I'm more comfortable with the Continuous form (perhaps because I've written many more Visual QuickStart Guides). I think that it's friendlier and invites the reader to follow along with you; I'm personally a bit put off by the Imperative form. The Continuous form was also the one required by the Dummies books that I did.

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