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I'd add a minor qualification if at all possible when I give people a
choice about doing something. E.G., "You can ship the product in its
uninitialized state or its initialized state, according to your
circumstances/business model." You could even add, "Contact Support (or
xxx) if you have any questions" or "See section xxx for more information"
or give examples like you did in your full explanation of the two states
(e.g., Company A; Company B; Company C).
Regards,
Kathleen
On Wed, Oct 10, 2012 at 1:14 PM, McLauchlan, Kevin <
Kevin -dot- McLauchlan -at- safenet-inc -dot- com> wrote:
> I'm going with both Lynne Wright's and Margaret Cekis suggestions.
>
> Lynne said:
>
> I'd follow the principles of plain English writing style and strip it down
> to the essential idea, which is: "You can ship the product in its
> uninitialized state."
>
>
> Margaret said:
>
> Perhaps what the reviewer was objecting to was the absence of an article
> before "un-initialized". One reason we are advised to read our text out
> loud
> is that we (native speakers at least) tend to insert articles to improve
> the
> flow and pronouncability of what we are saying. Perhaps all the quibbles
> about initialized vs unintialized vs un-initialized were not the problem at
> all. Euphony was. The original sentence with all the 'ins" and "uns" was
> difficult to read without an intervening article. "The" does that without
> introducing indefiniteness.
>
>
> Thanks, all.
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Kathleen MacDowell
kathleen -dot- eamd -at- gmail -dot- com
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