I wrote in an essay: ‘We now have licence to move beyond [an idea].’ Grammarly flagged this up, saying that I should add an article before ‘licence’. Is this true, or is ‘licence’ interchangeable with ‘permission’ or ‘freedom’ in this context? Answer As usual, Grammerly can not think beyond the literal. Your sentence: ‘We now … Read more
I’ve been taught that when one mentions an object for the first time and it’s countable, one should use a/an before it. I know that there are exceptions, when you speak of a renoun object which everybody knows, like the moon. But I cannot see why the author uses definite articles in some places in … Read more
Sometime before nouns there’s no definite or indefinite articles like in this sentence (before representatives and congressional districts): The House of Representative is composed of representatives elected from congressional districts. Answer Plural nouns do not require articles. A singular noun does. There is a singular house and multiple representatives in “The House of Representatives”, which … Read more
I have read many sentences making use of ‘on behalf of’ meaning ‘as a representative of’. I know behalf is a noun, so when we could use ‘on the behalf of’ in a sentence? I consulted many websites, but none of them used ‘the’ article before ‘behalf’. Is it wrong to use ‘the’ before this … Read more
I have a stupid question about the use of the word “Figure”. Do we say “In Figure below” or “In the Figure below”. Thanks Omer Answer The question in the title and the question in the body are different, so let’s answer both. In the figure below is correct. Omitting the article would be ungrammatical. … Read more
1.The earth moves round the sun. 2.We live on earth. 3. The space shuttle returned to earth. I know that the definite article the is used before the word earth when it is considered a planet. When we think of earth as human habitation, we do not use the definite article the. 3.I know that … Read more
As generally agreed and as extensively discussed in this question, "an" should be used in place of the more common "a" where the following word begins with a vowel sound. I have just encountered for the first time an instance of the phrasing an mule in the book Why Chemical Reactions Happen (James Keeler and … Read more
I wrote a sentence: A study with a larger sample size is required to make more conclusive remarks. Grammarly tells me it should be, “A study with larger sample size is required to make more conclusive remarks”. Is this true? My sentence sounds correct to me. If yes, why? Answer Grammarly detects size as uncountable … Read more
If a proper noun includes the word “the” and we want to refer to it using the definite article, should “the” appear twice in succession? For example: “Can you pass me The Who CD?” vs. “can you pass me the The Who CD?” “The US Government passed The Hague Act” vs. “The US Government passed … Read more
I have just done an English exercise and it’s about error correction: “You will remove one word which is unnecessary in each example.” Here is the sentence which I meet the unnecessary word: Thanks to cheap air travel, for many people the world has grown significantly smaller over the last decade, but to vegetarians, the … Read more
