Dave's ESL Cafe's Student Discussion Forums

[Inna Mishanina]

Please, could anyone explain this rule to me: I've been trying to understand it for many years, but it still seems a challenge to me. Are all these '-ing's in the two sentenses below actually gerund? When shall we say "doing it" and when "doing OF it". I took these sentences from the American Corpora.
1) Do something repetitively enough, and the doing of it becomes unconscious.
2) Discussing this with a stranger at a party is at once uncomfortable and uninteresting. Doing it 10 times in one night is excruciating.
What is the difference? In all the three cases the -ing forms seem to me Subjects, so the function is the same...

And a special challenge for me normally is nominative sentences serving as subheadlines within a text. They seem to have only subjects, without any predicates, verbs, so what is a wright structure for them? I translated such headlines into English myself and everything seems wrong to me...
- Powder filling into vials OR Filling powder into vials (like a headline naming a process that is described further).
- Glass ampule filling (meaning that glass ampules are filled with some liquid). And btw, can we say "LIQUID FILLING of glass ampules" or "Glass Ampule Liquid Filling"?
- Filling antibiotic powders OR Antibiotic powder filling (meaning that the powder is filled into something).
- Aseptic filling of penicillin antibiotic powders for intravenous and intramuscular administration OR "of" is not required?

Sorry for such a long question, I wouldn't like to bother you much, but I'm completely puzzled with this and none of the grammar rules I've already read anywhere seems to answer my question(( I decided to try to solve it once and forever:D