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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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