The term in question is phrasal verb which is defined as
a phrase which consists of a verb in combination with a preposition or adverb or both, the meaning of which is different from the meaning of its separate parts. Cambridge
When changing the tense of a phrasal verb, only the verb is affected, for the simple reason that adverbs and prepositions do not change with tense, as they are not verbs. It is also crucial to note that phrasal verbs do not come with hyphens. However, a number of them can be hyphenated or compounded to function as adjectives or nouns with related or unrelated meanings.
To use your example, the past tense of mouse over would be moused over, while the present participle would be mousing over. You could also hyphenate to make a noun, as in, "The trackball is so bad that a simple mouse-over to the top-left corner of the screen takes more than twenty seconds."
For reference, here is the definition of mouse over:
mouse (verb)
[with adverbial of direction] use a mouse to move a cursor on a computer screen:
mouse over to the window and click on it NOAD
Some standard phrasal verbs, their tenses and their adjective/noun derivatives:
PHRASAL VERB PAST TENSE PRESENT PARTICIPLE ADJECTIVE/NOUN
brush off brushed off brushing off brush-off
fall out fell out falling out fallout • falling-out
check in checked in checking in check-in
cross over crossed over crossing over crossover
drop out dropped out dropping out dropout
knock down knocked down knocking down knockdown • knock-down
see through saw through seeing through see-through
shape up shaped up shaping up shape-up
stand by stood by standing by standby
take away took away taking away takeaway
take off took off taking off takeoff • take-off
All this said, there are indeed some standard hyphenated verbs (these belong to the larger group of compound verbs, majority of which do not have a hypen, e.g. backstab, broadside, singsong, overtake, bypass, etc.), but these are not verb-preposition combinations, as you indicated. Rather, they terminate in verbs or are wholly verbal in composition. For these species, the tense change affects the word in its entirety. Examples:
COMPOUND VERB PAST TENSE PRESENT PARTICIPLE
(with hyphen)
booby-trap booby-trapped booby-trapping
flip-flop flip-flopped flip-flopping
see-saw see-sawed see-sawing
sun-dry sun-dried sun-drying
T-bone T-boned T-boning
However, there exists one (and there may be a few more) true hyphenated phrasal verb (verb-preposition) that is treated wholly as a verb: one-up
PHRASAL VERB PAST TENSE PRESENT PARTICIPLE ADJECTIVE/NOUN
one-up one-upped one-upping one up [on]
It appears, however, that this verb may be a back-formation from the original noun phrase and, later, adjective, one up.
I've been editing biomedical writing every day for the past 15 years. That's the way biomedical science writers write. Everybody imitates everybody else. Many of the writers are not native speakers of English, so the language that actually gets printed is a mash of usually outstanding imitations of poor writing by native speakers of English and of English using the structures of the native language of the author. Publishers used to have more money to copyedit manuscripts, but now they not only require the authors to pay for their own copyediting, but also to do a lot of the formatting work. Publishers tend to believe that if they think their journal's readers will understand the point of the paper, that's good enough.
Almost all academic writing is as bad as biomedical writing. It's no longer just the social sciences. All the sciences, humanities, and business articles I read and revise sound the same to me. Academic writers can't seem to write a sentence that doesn't contain at least one phrase like "prior to" (instead of "before"), "plays an important role in" (instead of "is important for/in" or "is involved in"), "due to" (but never "because of"), "for the measurement of" (instead of "to measure"), etc. Very few academic authors care about brevity or clarity of expression, only publication of expression, because publications in the right SCI journals lead to promotions or at least allow them to keep their jobs. Good writing gets them nothing because it takes time and energy and thought, reduces the number of publications possible per year.
These academic scribblers are writing essentially for themselves (Linda Flowers's Writer-Based Prose) and experts in their field, so they often use technical jargon and shop-talk lingo.
Professor Lawler's comments on compound nouns are spot on; however, the problem is not grammar but style. Each usage has to be considered in context, not excised from context. Academic writers, however, generally don't seem to care about style, only content. Compound nouns like "monkey cortex" are perfectly normal and specific; there's no article because "monkey cortex" is treated like "water", a non-count noun phrase. Add a counter (cell or cells) and usage rules change. "Simian cortex" is too vague, too general, too nonspecific, as is "rodent cognition" (if one is studying cognition only in rats). A "murine model" includes both rats and mice, but if the experiment uses only mice, a "mouse model" is better because it's specific.
Biomedical and other technical writing is filled with long and unwieldy phrases that writers like to shorten. I can't blame them for that. I try to do the same thing, especially when the publisher says that there's a word limit for the manuscript. This is one reason for the often annoying compound noun phrases. Another is the annoyance of having to read and write long and unwieldy phrases that can be shortened.
Your examples are all very good. The first summarizes the problems well; the second and third give good advice.
By the way, sometimes "good" and "well" are interchangeable. Some writers and speakers say "It is well to remember X", but others say "It is good to remember X". This is a matter of dialect and style, not grammar. The words function the same way in the sentence. In "Don't sing so loud" and "Don't sing so loudly", loud and loudly function as adverbs of manner but with different forms. Both are acceptable grammatically to most native speakers of English (there's always going to be someone who disagrees, no matter what one says or who says it).
There are dozens of essays in biomedical journals lamenting the sad state of biomedical writing. Don't blame the non-native speakers of English who write biomedical articles in English: they are merely imitating native speakers of English and the essays written by the top people in their field and published, regardless of the quality of the writing, by the professional journals they read. Most non-native speakers can't judge whether writing is good or bad or just mediocre if it's not in their native language; and, frankly, neither can most native speakers judge whether writing is good or bad or just mediocre even if it is in their native language. (Why do so many people buy kitsch and think it's art?)
"Scientific writing is as it does". That seems accurate to me. Scientific writing is often boring and bloated. It bores its readers and makes them want to put the article down without having read the whole thing. But if the content's compelling enough, no one will care at all about the poor style. Then the captive audience will read the garbage-language that science writers and publishers offer them.
Best Answer
Theoretically, any, absolutely any noun — and indeed any, absolutely any word — in English can be used as a verb. Nothing prevents you from exampling, betweening, egadsing or greating. Theoretically.
In practice, there are of course a variety of reasons why not everything gets verbified. For starters, there are only so many words you really need in everyday conversation. You don't use example as a verb, but you also don't use amaranthine as an adjective. For all you know, both are sitting in a dictionary somewhere, but for all you care, both might as well not exist.
Secondly, there is that linguistic phenomenon called "blocking". We already have the word "to compute", so its existence blocks the verb "to computer" from getting any traction, or indeed from being created in the first place. If it is to be introduced and get any traction, then only in a meaning different from that of "to compute". The difference can be very slight; it can also be one of register or dialect rather than one of meaning, but it will be a difference nonetheless.
Likewise, there is no way to tell what "he examples" might end up meaning should it ever get introduced, but it's likely to be something entirely different from "he demonstrates", or "he leads by example", because we already have other words for those which everybody uses.