A small linguistic epiphany...

I was just translating a sentence that has the general (near-literal) form:

The areas where this applies are: a, b, c, d, and others.

(where I've substituted things like "atomic energy" with letters). While getting rid of that pesky colon is pretty straightforward, the sentence scans strangely, almost as if the writer was too lazy to complete the list.

Then it occurred to me that a smoother rendering might be:

The areas where this applies include a, b, c, and d.

Much better!

It turned out the item that arrived yesterday is sorta urgent (as in, the client wants it back today), so here I am, at the face of the salt mine, but not so rushed as to miss a subtle improvement such as this.

Cheers...