Friday, April 24, 2015

Adjectives modifying a list




"The Bank's information department is responsible for the related
system maintenance, obstacle removal and backup process."




Does the adjective "related" modify all three items in the list or only the first item?



Is there room for interpretation?




If I wanted the adjective "related" to modify all three items, without adding "related" in front of all three items lest it feel redundant,



how would I go about it?



Thank you in advance for your insights!


Answer




"The Bank's information department is responsible for the related
system maintenance, obstacle removal and backup process."





I think that most readers would interpret this to mean that all the activities were related to something. However it is not perfectly clear to me what that something is. Does a previous sentence make it clear what they are related to?



In any case, one way to make your intention clearer is as follows:




"The Bank's information department is responsible for the related actions of system maintenance, obstacle removal and backup."



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