The Calibration Section Legal Will Not Let Him Rewrite Freely
At a medical-device company, Owen is editing the calibration section of an instructions-for-use document before it goes to a regulatory reviewer. The current text reads: "The device should be calibrated by the user prior to utilization. If it is not done, inaccurate readings may result. Users must avoid using the device in humid environments, the device should not be dropped, and never calibrate with the housing removed." The section must stay within 120 words, and legal has barred the word "safe" from the document. Owen's manager wants him to "make it sound more professional," by which she means more passive and impersonal. A separate warning list elsewhere in the document already covers dropping the device. The product ships in nine weeks, and every edit must be traceable in the change log.
1. Identify the two defects in this section that carry the highest real-world risk, and explain why they outrank the others given the document's purpose.
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Highest-risk defect one: the orphaned pronoun. "If it is not done" has no agreed referent - calibration or utilization? A user skimming an action step may attach "it" to the wrong operation and skip calibration, which the next sentence says produces inaccurate readings on a medical device.
Highest-risk defect two: the nonparallel warning list. "Users must avoid…, the device should not be dropped, and never calibrate…" shifts subject three times (users, the device, an implied you) and shifts mood (a prohibition, a passive prohibition, an imperative). The third item also changes topic - from how to treat the device to how to perform a procedure. In a warnings block that readers scan rather than read, inconsistent form means missed items.
Why these outrank the rest: this is a regulated instructions-for-use document. Style preferences, word count, and even the manager's "professional" register are secondary to whether a user performs the required action. An ambiguity in an action step can cause a mis-calibrated device and inaccurate readings; a ragged warning list can cause a user to calibrate with the housing off. Both are safety and liability events, not editing preferences. The passive voice the manager wants is the lowest priority - and it would worsen defect one by removing the actor entirely.
2. Revise the pronoun problem and the nonparallel warning list. Show the revision and explain both the grammar and the safety logic.
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Pronoun revision: "Calibrate the device before first use. If the device is not calibrated, readings may be inaccurate."
The fix is to replace the pronoun with its noun. "It" required the reader to reconstruct the referent from context, and the context offered two candidates. Naming "the device" costs two words and removes the ambiguity. The revision also puts the actor in the imperative ("Calibrate"), which is shorter and clearer than "should be calibrated by the user."
List revision: "Users must (1) avoid humid environments, (2) keep the device from dropping, and (3) calibrate only with the housing in place."
Grammar: each item now shares one subject (users) and one grammatical form (verb + object). The third item, which had drifted into an imperative addressed to a different actor, is brought back into the same frame.
Safety logic: a warning list is scanned, not read. When every item begins the same way, the eye can find item boundaries and the reader can check compliance item by item. The revision also converts "never calibrate with the housing removed" into a positive instruction ("calibrate only with the housing in place"), which tells the user what to do rather than only what to avoid.
3. How should the 120-word limit, the ban on "safe," and the existing warning elsewhere change your editing plan? Address the manager's request directly.
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The word limit forces ranking rather than trimming. Keep the calibration step, the consequence of skipping it, and the humidity, drop, and housing items. Cut "prior to utilization" to "before first use" (saves three words), and drop the redundant passive constructions the manager favors - each passivization typically costs two or three words to say less.
The ban on "safe" rules out the tempting softening moves: I cannot write "it is safe to calibrate with the housing removed" or "safe in humid conditions." Every warning must state the condition and the action directly, which is what the parallel list already does. If legal review asks for a rationale, the change log entry should record that the ban drove the positive-imperative phrasing.
The existing warning elsewhere means the drop instruction can be cross-referenced rather than repeated, which buys the words needed elsewhere - but the cross-reference must be explicit ("see Warnings, item 4"), since an unlabeled pointer is worse than the duplicate.
On the manager's request: "impersonal" is not the same as "professional." In an IFU, professional means unambiguous. I would offer a compromise - passive retained only where the actor is genuinely unknown - and show her the section at 118 words, since the word limit makes the case better than I can.