5 exercises — conditional connectors, contrast markers, and cause-effect linkers for specs, proposals, and design docs.
0 / 5 completed
1 / 5
Choose the best connector: "The service will auto-scale _____ the average CPU utilisation exceeds 70% for more than five minutes."
"Provided that" introduces a condition that must be met for the main clause to apply. It is equivalent to "if and only if" and is the formal register equivalent of "if." It is common in SLAs, infrastructure specs, and configuration documentation. "As long as" is a near-synonym but slightly less formal.
2 / 5
Select the best connector for this design rationale: "_____ the current read volume exceeds 50,000 requests per minute, a read replica is essential for acceptable latency."
"Given that" introduces a known fact or acknowledged premise as the reason or justification for a recommendation. It is more formal than "because" and common in design docs, architecture decision records (ADRs), and technical proposals. "In light of" is a synonym.
3 / 5
An engineer is comparing two caching strategies. Choose the best contrast connector: "Redis offers persistence and pub/sub capabilities. _____, Memcached provides a simpler, lower-overhead option for pure caching use cases."
"By contrast" signals a comparison where the second item differs significantly from the first. It is stronger than "however" when explicitly comparing two alternatives. In technical comparison documents and ADRs, "by contrast" and "on the other hand" are the preferred formal contrast markers.
4 / 5
Complete this SLA clause: "Planned maintenance windows will not count as downtime _____ customers are notified at least 72 hours in advance."
"As long as" states an ongoing condition that must remain true for the main clause to apply. It emphasises continuity — the condition must be maintained, not just met once. In SLAs and service agreements, "as long as" and "provided that" are interchangeable, though "as long as" is slightly less formal.
5 / 5
Choose the best cause-effect linker: "The deployment pipeline introduced a 40-minute delay. _____, the team decided to implement parallel test execution."
"Consequently" introduces a result or outcome caused by the preceding situation. It is a formal synonym of "as a result" or "therefore." In technical retrospectives and design rationale sections, "consequently" signals that a decision or change was driven by a specific preceding problem or event.