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Wednesday, May 21, 2008

Criminal Sentence 22: Shorten When You Have the Ability (When You Can)

From a brochure about printing:

"We have the ability to print on a wide variety of coated and uncoated stocks."

The phrases "have the ability to" and "are able to" are both wordy ways of saying "can." One of your goals when you are writing should be to use the fewest number of words, so I discourage you from using these two phrases. I prefer "can":

"We can print on a wide variety of coated and uncoated stocks."

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