[General] Various or respective warehouses?

[Toxxyc]

Good afternoon ladies and gents,

I'm a new technical writer from South Africa. English is my third language and I aim to learn it best I can. I don't want to drone on, so my question follows.

I'm currently facing a decision I'm not comfortable with making on my own. I'm documenting a piece of software and it covers the topic of warehouses. So the sentence I wrote involves the following snippet:

"transfer the new stock into your various warehouses"

This has gone for review and the developer reckons it should be changed to "respective warehouses" instead. I see where he's coming from, but I did some research and unfortunately that didn't clear up my problem.

In short, I feel like "respective" is more of a particular word, relating to a more personal association between a warehouse and an item or product, for example. Various, to me, sounds more broad and covers the topic of numerous warehouses easier.

So, the question - which one do I go for, and why? If there's a better way to structure the sentence to avoid this problem altogether, I'd also be happy to hear it.

Finally, thanks for letting me on here. I hope to learn plenty (I don't know where to post an introduction).

 

[emsr2d2]

Welcome to the forum. :hi:

I agree that "various" isn't great there. It sounds as if each person has more than one warehouse. I don't really like "respective" either. I'm not sure you need anything there. What's wrong with "Transfer the new stock to your warehouse"?

 

[Toxxyc]

Welcome to the forum. :hi:

I agree that "various" isn't great there. It sounds as if each person has more than one warehouse. I don't really like "respective" either. I'm not sure you need anything there. What's wrong with "Transfer the new stock to your warehouse"?

I pitched the idea of simply saying "to your warehouses" but for some reason the dev worked in the word "respective" there. I think I'll get back to them and simply remove the problematic word altogether as per your suggestion.

 

[tedmc]

I pitched the idea of simply saying "to your warehouses" but for some reason the dev worked in the word "respective" there. I think I'll get back to them and simply remove the problematic word altogether as per your suggestion.

Respective means belonging/attributed to something. What are the warehouses respective to?

 

[tedmc]

Respective means Belonging or relating separately to each of two or more people or things. (https://www.lexico.com/en/definition/respective). It's therefore possible in the original sentence.

What are the "people or things" in the context?

 

[jutfrank]

I think we need to know more context in order to get the intended meaning.

Who does 'your' refer to? The suggestion of respective seems to say that there are several 'yous' and/or several kinds of stock. If there is only one you and several kinds of stock, then ... into its/the respective warehouse would seem to make sense.

Please tell us much more about what the sentence is supposed to mean.

 

[Toxxyc]

Yeah but that doesn't makes sense to me either. Essentially, the software allows you to create a branch, and each branch can have numerous warehouses. I'm not 100% sure about the word "respective" in this sense. It doesn't feel right to me, if that makes sense?

 

[tedmc]

The people Toxxyc is writing to.

I think the word does not add anything or make any difference to the sentence. The sentence is just as vague.

 

[PeterCW]

As I have been involved in technical writing like this I am nervous about commenting without seeing the passage in context. Taken in isolation "your warehouses" seems fine assuming that your software is dealing here with the distribution of one batch of stock to one or many warehouses.

 

[Toxxyc]

Alrighty, let me describe the situation a bit better. I need to describe, in a one-liner, what a section called "stock transfer" does. Stock transfer allows you to transfer products (stock) between a source and destination warehouse. Simple. What I have is this:
[h=3]Stock Transfer[/h]Allows you to transfer stock between your respective/various warehouses.

To me, the word "various" works here, because you can transfer stock between various different warehouses.


There also is a stock overview section, which provides you with an overview of your stock levels in various locations (warehouses, employees, delivery, etc.):

[h=3]Stock Overview[/h]Displays an overview of your current stock levels in its respective/various locations.

To me, looking at the previous answers on here, the word "respective" works here, because you are viewing stock levels in their respective locations.

It helps to discuss this a bit and not just to hear my own voice droning on and on about it. I think I'm starting to see the proper difference between the two words' intended uses.

 

[emsr2d2]

I still don't think you need "respective/various/different". The fact that it says "warehouses" makes it clear you're talking about more than one, which is all that seems to be important here.

 

[Tdol]

your particular/own warehouses?

 

[Toxxyc]

A great, big thanks to everyone who contributed to this thread. I have decided to remove the ambiguous words altogether and have just gone with "warehouses". After explaining it to the guys involved they understood the problem and agreed. Besides, a shorter sentence is better in technical writing, so it's a win all round.