RE: Grammar?

[David Hawkins <david -dot- hawkins -at- citrix -dot- com>]

Beware of removing meaning to avoid redundancy.

"types of notices" and "notices" are not the same thing. If you say there
are five notices in a manual, that means there are five notices. Total. I
don't think that's what the first writer meant.

How about this wording:

Five types of notices appear in this manual: Warning (three types), Caution,
and Note.

BTW, does the choice of "warning" or "warnings" in the original depend on
word order?
...five warning types... (adj.)
...five types of warnings... (n.)

That's how it sounds to my ear, anyway, but I'm not sure that's absolutely
correct. I have a suspicion that, in formal writing, it should be "five
types of warning" or "I have three types of shrunken head in my collection."
Seems like in "type of thing" constructions, the "thing" should actually be
singular.

But in a user manual, NOBODY is gonna give it this level of scrutiny.


David H.


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