The junk mail subject piqued my interest but not to own a swamp or make a pit stop. No, I wanted to know if “land” was on the approved verb list.
According to the authors of simplified technical English it’s not.
The Simplified Technical English standard is used by those who prepare maintenance documentation for the North American and European aerospace industry. A method of writing using controlled language aims to prevent misinterpretation. This is accomplished by limiting general word use to fewer than 1000 and adopting around 200 approved verbs.
stop, start, get, make – approved verbs
begin, end, land, manufacture – not approved
A dictionary plus set of writing rules and training are things that help writers cope.
There’s this little detail about housekeeping called TMI. Too much information goes something like this. Master the art of potato peeling in the following three ways.
And that list is fine until you append fourth and fifth ways to skin a spud. Now you, or more likely someone else, will have to update “three” to another number. The person inheriting the list becomes responsible for TMI. Good housekeeping avoids referring to a finite number.
Speaking of finite items, once there were nine, now there are eight planets. That housekeeping detail was massive, very necessary, and had to be updated everywhere immediately.