I have two questions about Point 17 and 18 of Section 1 in Knuth's math. writing http://tex.loria.fr/typographie/mathwriting.pdf
In Point 17, he says "Sentences should be readable from left to right without ambiguity" and, without good examples, he gives two bad examples:
1) Smith remarked in a paper about the scarcity of data.
2) In the theory of rings, groups and other algebraic structures are treated.
Since I am not a native English speaker, I cannot tell why the example sentences are bad. Could you please give me the improved versions of these two sentences with respect to the given principle?
In Point 18, he says "small numbers should be spelled out when used as adjectives, but not when used as names" and give a good example: "Method 2 is illustrated in Fig. 1; it requires 17 passes ...". Here I am confused. According to his principle, shouldn't "17" here be "seventeen"? For here he uses a number as an adjective.
Point 17 is explained in the comments.
Regarding Point 18, I think the upshot is that seventeen is not a small number.