# able (1-able.us)

Able means having the power, skill, or means to do something. A person who is able can walk, work, or finish a task without help.

## What a model may hear
- capability flag or toggle (software configuration and feature flags): check whether a feature is enabled before running code
- accessibility attribute (web development (ARIA, HTML)): set whether an element is interactive or available to assistive technology
- permission or entitlement (authorization systems and IAM): grant or deny a user the right to perform an action
- suffix forming adjectives (linguistics and NLP tokenization): parse 'readable' or 'portable' as able + root, or flag it as a morphological unit

## Where people and models part ways
- Says: "Make me able to edit this."
  Means: Give me permission or a way to edit.
  May be taken as: Set a boolean flag named 'able' to true in a config file without changing the actual interface.
  Say instead: "Add an edit button that I can click."
- Says: "Is the system able to handle this?"
  Means: Can the system do this job now?
  May be taken as: Check only a feature flag called 'able' and ignore actual capacity or load.
  Say instead: "Does the system have enough resources and the right features to handle this?"
- Says: "Keep it able for everyone."
  Means: Make sure everyone can use it.
  May be taken as: Set all ARIA 'aria-disabled' attributes to false without testing with screen readers.
  Say instead: "Make sure the design works for people using screen readers and keyboards too."

## Tips
- Say 'can do' or 'has permission' instead of 'is able' when you mean a specific action.
- Mention the feature name if you want a flag checked: 'enable the export feature'.
- Say 'works with screen readers' if you mean accessibility, not just 'is able'.
- Ask about capacity in numbers: 'can it handle ten requests' beats 'is it able'.
- Use 'let me' or 'give me access to' for permissions, not 'make me able to'.

## Often confused with
- enable: turns a feature on, not about a person's capacity
- capable: stresses potential, often used for systems not people
- active: means running now, not just possible
- eligible: meets rules for selection, not general ability
- available: free to use, not skilled or permitted