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Subject:RE: For V/s Of From:Jimmy Breck-McKye <jb527 -at- hotmail -dot- co -dot- uk> To:<techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com> Date:Wed, 12 Jan 2011 22:12:22 +0000
> Which sentence reflects the correct usage: a or b?Both are valid, but (a) could be misread as 'you lack privileges for *this specific* shipment', because 'for' can mean 'in the case of'. Construction (b) is harder to misinterpret.
>Except that I would really say "Viewing details of this shipment>requires privilege level X."
Actually, I would have ordered the sentence differently. My logic: As a user, I already know what I want to do, so I'd prefer an error that got straight to the cause of disruption, rather than start by reminding me what I just clicked. As such, I would have written
> You must be an Administrator to view details of this shipment
*But*, if there are lots of potential actions a user can perform on a shipment, each accessible to different user groups, then I'd be tempted make the action in question my sentence's subject, as per your example. If I expected the user to see *lots* of permission messages, I'd write them in the same format (so they could be recognized at a glance), but head the sentence with the privilege in question.
Thoughts?
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