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At 12:17 PM 9/16/98 -0500, Laurel Nelson wrote:
>Michelle Corbin asked:
>What are other people's thoughts about nouns versus verbs and which
>deserves more of the "primary" focus?
>_____________________
>
>Like you, Michelle, I focus on the nouns rather than the verbs. Putting in
>verb synonyms is time consuming and they make the index too long.
I tend to use the verb when it is highly likely that the end-users will
look up that word. For example "Printing a report" would be indexed under
both "Report" and "Printing." But, "Adding a field to a report" would only
be indexed under "Field" and "Report." I refer to it as "indexing _strong_
verbs."