Maybe it's just to make it easier to read? Maybe not everyone reads texts that use 傾げる with kanji(I imagine it would appear primarily in novels, that's my experience). 傾げる can only be read one way. I bet the dictionary is more concerned with people being able to read the definitions than showing off how many kanji it can use.

I see this all the time. I've seen むかしばなし, 昔ばなし and むかし話 all in the same book. I've seen おまえ and お前 in the same manga. I've seen いう and 言う in the same article (with the same meaning). And so on. I've found inconsistencies even occuring on the same page right next to each other.

As you probably know kana is more common in some cases. E.g., common words like ここ（此処）, ある（有る）, etc.; という to "quote" something rather than to indicate speech; いく・くる used after a -te verb. Apart from that though, inconsistencies occur and I haven't found any discernible pattern.

yeah it is a bit annoying, keeps coming up personally and i've mostly just been learning the kanji forms as well.

btw does anybody use the yahoo dictionary for their look-ups? on their definitions, there are some symbols which puzzle me....and might relate to my problem

For instance, with におい (a smell/fragrance):
http://dic.yahoo.co.jp/dsearch?enc=UTF- … mp;dtype=3

at the top of the definition they have the kanji-readings in square brackets 匂い is listed as one reading but there's a cross next to it? does this mean that this character is never used? noticed that none of the example sentences use the kanji.

also, there are those up and down arrows which i have no clue as to what they indicate.........can anybody shed some light on this?

The symbol usage key for that dictionary says ▼ indicates a usage note (as you see from the におい entry they're not very useful since they're telling you things you already know about English word usage).