The lunchroom tables were clean except for some plates and napkins.

In this sentence, which word should be replaced with precise language?

Tables

Plates

Clean

Some

Some

When writing for academia, such as when writing an essay for a class or constructing a research paper, it is important to be as precise as possible. Within the sentence you provided above, all words appear precise except the word "some." "Some" is a vague and can be considered to be a relative word (meaning it can mean different things to different people). What you would want to do is provide a specific number. For instance, one possible revision could be "The lunchroom tables were clean except for 21 plates and 34 napkins." Here, the vagueness of "some" has been replaced with a specific number leaving nothing up to interpretation.