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I read this question and realised that I don't know what the natural way to make a title/section heading is.

Supposing I had a section in a science report which was "Designing the experiment". What would be natural ways to write this? Here are some guesses:

1) 実験を設計している
2) 実験を設計していること
3) 実験の設計

1) feels wrong to me. I'm not at all sure about 2). 3) Seems okay but it only works because I used a する verb.

Presumably the context is important too. Adding こと in 2) sounds formal. I guess I wouldn't see that in a magazine headline. What about "Eating in fancy restaurants" as the title of a magazine article. Would the verb be 食べている, 食べる or some other conjugation?

In summary, how do you write "Doing X" as a headline/title/section heading in formal and informal contexts?

user3856370
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1 Answers1

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Suru-verbs are also nouns, so something like 実験計画 or 実験の計画 should be enough. (設計 is usually for product design.) Non-suru-verbs are uncommon in scientific articles in the first place. You should use 摂取/摂食/食事 instead of 食べること, 睡眠 instead of 寝ること, 閲覧/観察/確認/etc instead of 見ること, and so on. In addition, some established nouns formed from masu-stem are suitable in technical contexts, too.

naruto
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  • Maybe it's just because I've never seen them before, but 摂取 and 摂食 look like difficult words. Would they really be used for a light-hearted magazine article? In general though, your advice is to avoid using verbs, right? – user3856370 Nov 24 '18 at 08:41