Re: "...do busines in." -or- "...in which you do business"

["Ridder, Fred" <Fred -dot- Ridder -at- DIALOGIC -dot- COM>]

On Wed, 12 May 1999, John Posada asked:

>I'm pretty sure I know which one to use grammatically,
>but being that language does evolve, what would you
>use in your documentation?
>
>-----------
>You will be guided through the process of creating and
>defining the information that identifies each country
>in which you do business.
>
>or
>
>You will be guided through the process of creating and
>defining the information that identifies each country
>you do business in.
>-------------

Personally, I think I'd write something like:

The software now guides you through the process of
creating and defining information that identifies each
country where you do business.

This avoids the awkward preposition "in" entirely, and
also recasts the sentence from future tense and passive
voice into a direct declaration. One thing that is still
ambiguous, however, is whether each users really
decide *which* pieces of information they want to use
to identify countries (which is currently implied, I think)
or whether the user is simply entering standard items
of information that the system uses for identification.

Fred Ridder
Dialogic Corp.
Parsippany, NJ


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