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A synonym for "don't omit" not including a negativiser

English Language & Usage Asked on December 15, 2020

I have a technical document with a lot of sentences like "Use X." or "Don’t use Y."

Instead of "Don’t use …" I sometimes use "Omit …". Whether to choose the former form or the latter depends on whether "bad thing" could be "removed" without any additional changes.

Parentheses to make operator precedence explicit

Omit them.

(2 * 3) - 1   // Wrong
2 * 3 - 1     // Correct

Else and Else If after jump statements

Don’t use them.

// Wrong
if (a = b)
  return x
else if (a = c)
  return y
else
  return z
// Correct
if (a = b)
  return x
if (a = c)
  return y
return z

But sometimes I need to say "Don’t omit …" and such a wording is somewhat very close to a double negative. Since the document discourages double negatives in code, it’s not a good idea to have them in the document itself.

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