Gerunds

[Paul W. Frields]

In the spirit of Elizabeth West's recent tips for better writing,
here's one to consider:

Avoid the gerund wherever possible.

Gerunds are those words in English that end in "-ing."  Sentences that
use them tend to feature awkward construction, passive voice, and lack
of conciseness.  Gerunds also translate awkwardly in many languages.
Check out this example:

"Installing the foobar package is the only way of making it easy to
change baz configuration."

This is a bit unfair, because I've also mixed in a style problem that
I see many times in gerund-infested material, some of which I've
created myself.  Now look at a reconstruction of the sentence:

"To change the configuration of baz, install the foobar package."

What are some of the effects of the rewrite?

* Drops sentence from 16 words to 10

* Increases clarity

* Provides a neutral tone of confident instruction instead of arrogance

* Puts the important material at the end of the sentence, which in
  English is the position of emphasis

* Avoids personalizing the instructions too much.

* Avoids making qualitative judgments ("easy")

I always tend to look at gerunds I've written very critically.  Far
more often than not, I find they pop up when I lack confidence in an
assertion.  Technical documentation should be confident so users feel
they can trust the material.

Hope this helps!
 
-- 
Paul W. Frields                                http://paul.frields.org/
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  http://redhat.com/   -  -  -  -   http://pfrields.fedorapeople.org/
  irc.freenode.net: stickster @ #fedora-docs, #fedora-devel, #fredlug
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