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At previous employers I have used "Preliminaries" (or "Preliminary steps") or "Prerequisites". Either of these would suit your second use case (things that need to be done before starting on the procedure steps), but probably not the first use case (a decision tree for where to begin the procedure in specific cases). I'm not sure I see *any* heading that neatly suits both use cases other than something like "Before you begin".
-Fred Ridder
> From: CMartinek -at- zebra -dot- com
> To: techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com
> Date: Mon, 28 Oct 2013 10:43:43 -0500
> Subject: Pre-Installation heading
>
> Looking for some feedback on the text for a heading in many of our installation procedures for our products. They are written in the imperative format (except for the first one, Parts List).
>
> ___Parts List
>
> ___Remove Part A
> ___Remove Part B
> ___Remove Part C
>
> ___Reinstall Part C
> ___Reinstall Part B
> ___Reinstall Part A
>
> My issue is that there are times where we need to have a heading prior to Remove Part A ... often it includes a decision table along the lines of "which option do you need to remove/replace?" and they jump to Remove Part B or Remove Part C and skip the ones before it. Or, it could be something such as removing power from the system and removing supplies inside the machine.
>
> Looking for some suggestions on what to call this heading. We've had a heading that we're not happy with, but we can't seem to come up with something we do like, so I thought I'd get ideas from the list and see if someone else has a better idea.
>
> ___Parts List
>
> ___WHAT DO I CALL THIS?
>
> ___Remove Part A
> ___Remove Part B
> ___Remove Part C
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