Expert: Dan Smith - 10/27/2005

Question
Dear Mr. Smith,

I'd like to know about a wording used in a title of a patent abstract.

A: WORKING VEHICLE SPEED CHANGE CONTROL DEVICE AND SPEED CHANGE CONTROL METHOD

B:  SPEED CHANGE CONTROLLING DEVICE FOR WORKING VEHICLE AND SPEED CHANGE CONTROLLING METHOD

My first question is which is appropriate and natural for the title of a patent abstract in terms of the wording without FOR (example A) and the one using FOR (example B).  My second one is which one of CONTROL and CONTROLLING is appropriate and natural.
I'd be appreciated if you will give me the reasons in the basis of the technical writing, too.
Thank you for handling with a troublesome matter.

Mineko

Answer
I would phrase this as follows:

<<Vehicle speed-change control device and speed-change control method>>

These are the natural-language preferences for such, however. It really doesn't have anything to do with the specifics of technical writing.

I question whether "working" is necessary at all since I can't imaging that one would need to control the speed of a non-working vehicle. Note that in this context "speed-change" is a compound adjective and should be hyphenated.

Hope this helps.