5 exercises — practise precise placement of only, even, and just to control meaning in technical writing.
0 / 5 completed
1 / 5
A bug report needs to state that ONLY admin users are affected, not other roles. Which sentence places "only" correctly to avoid ambiguity?
"Only admin users are affected" places the focus adverb directly before the phrase it modifies ("admin users"), making it unambiguous that admin users — and no other role — are affected. Option B is ambiguous: "are only affected" could mean "affected in only this way" (as opposed to some other consequence) rather than "only this group is affected". Option C is also ambiguous and slightly unnatural, potentially suggesting "affected by only this bug" rather than restricting which users are affected. Option D is ungrammatical word order — "only" cannot be inserted between an adjective-like modifier and its noun in this way.
2 / 5
Which sentence uses "even" to correctly emphasize that senior engineers were surprised, implying it was unexpected for them specifically?
"Even the senior engineers" places "even" immediately before the noun phrase it emphasizes, correctly conveying "surprisingly, this included even the most experienced people, who would normally not be surprised". Option A is ungrammatical — "even" cannot function as a pre-noun adjective modifier in this position. Option B awkwardly places "even" after "by", making it seem to modify "the memory leak" (implying other things were less surprising causes), which changes the intended meaning. Option D shifts the focus to the verb, suggesting a different (and less natural) reading about the degree of the surprise itself.
3 / 5
A release note needs to say that the fix addresses JUST the login timeout issue, and no other issue. Choose the sentence with correct scope for "just":
"Fixes just the login timeout issue" places "just" directly before the object it restricts, unambiguously meaning "and nothing else". Option A is genuinely ambiguous in everyday usage — "just fixes" is often read as "only fixes" (restricting the issue) but can also be misread as "recently fixed" (a time reading, like "has just fixed"), which is confusing in written technical documentation without further context. Option C places "just" at the end of the sentence, which is grammatically unnatural and does not clearly attach to "the login timeout issue". Option D moves the focus adverb to the front, incorrectly suggesting that only this patch (and no other patch) fixes the issue, rather than restricting which issue this patch fixes.
4 / 5
A doc must state, without any ambiguity, that the read replica is the only component that logs the query (the primary does not). Choose the sentence that removes any doubt about scope:
"Only the read replica logs the query" is the unambiguous choice: fronting "only" directly before the subject "the read replica" leaves no doubt that the restriction applies to which component performs the logging, not to how, what, or when it logs. Option A places "only" at the very end, where it reads as an afterthought and is the weakest, least precise position of all four. Option B shifts scope onto "the query", implying other data besides the query might be logged. Option D places "only" right before the verb "logs", where by strict adjacency it could just as easily be read as restricting the action itself (e.g., "only logs it, rather than also alerting on it") rather than restricting the subject — the following "not the primary" clause helps a reader guess the intended meaning, but relying on a trailing clause to disambiguate is exactly the kind of imprecision technical writing should avoid.
5 / 5
Which sentence uses "even" to emphasize an extreme/unlikely case at the END of a scale, meaning "including this unlikely case"?
"Even a single dropped packet" correctly places "even" before the extreme case on the implied scale (from "many dropped packets" down to the minimal case of "a single" one), emphasizing that even the smallest, most unlikely trigger is sufficient — this is the standard and clearest placement for this meaning. Option A is ungrammatical, inserting "even" as if it were an adjective directly modifying "dropped packet". Option B incorrectly attaches "even" to "a retry storm", oddly implying that a retry storm is an extreme kind of consequence compared to other unstated consequences, which does not fit naturally. Option C shifts focus to the verb "trigger", implying something like "can even trigger [as opposed to merely cause a warning]", which changes the emphasis away from the packet count.