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Is it correct to use of twice in the following sentence?

The problem of absence of remote facilities is addressed in the article...

What is the best way of writing this sentence?

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While the sentence is correct, it's rather awkward.

Some options for improvement:

Absence of remote facilities is a problem, which is addressed in the article....

The problem that remote facilities are absent is addressed in the article....

The problem arising from the absence of remote facilities is addressed in the article....

Remote facilities are absent. The problem of such absence is addressed in the article....

Note that the above may be improvement over the original, but are not particularly elegant. Without knowing what follows "addressed in the article" and what "remote facilities" mean, I can't really do any better.

Also, active construction (something like "The article addresses the problem....") will probably improve clarity.

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The sentence is grammatically correct. A better wording, though, would be

The lack of remote facilities is addressed in the article…

Lack is a kind of absence that is a deficiency, and is therefore a more appropriate word.

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  • But lack isn't strictly the same thing as absence. In any case what's wrong with 'Problems arising from the absence of remote facilities are addressed in the article...' That would seem to be a less clumsy way of saying exactly what the OP said. After all it wasn't 'the absence of remote facilities' that was addressed, it was the associated problems that were addressed in the article.
    – WS2
    Commented Aug 24, 2014 at 7:54
  • @WS2 While it is true that "lack" doesn't necessarily mean a complete absence, it should be clear enough that it implies that the deficiency is problematic.
    – 200_success
    Commented Aug 24, 2014 at 16:29

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