In English, some participles have already become prepositions. The author noticed in her work as a technical editor that most of her writers seemed to perceive the participle using as a preposition already although it is not listed as such in the dictionary. The paper gives the evidence and rationale for making such a claim. It offers a window on written language change in progress and celebrates the language user’s ability to make the stolid dialect we call technical writing more vigorous and efficient by turning a participle into a preposition.