Morr Posted 11 years ago
Grammar
Help with the article
Dear teachers,
Could you please help me with the following?
I live near a bus terminal. It is hard to sleep at night because I keep on getting disturbed by buses.
I live near a bus terminal. It is hard to sleep at night because I keep on getting disturbed by the buses.
My English tutor, says that either is acceptable and that he prefers just "buses" without article. "The buses" means "the buses that use this terminal", but "buses" is correct and better, because I have already established that I live near a bus terminal and the the reader will know what I mean.
This weekend I went to the lake. It was a pleasure to sit on the shore and look at boats.
This weekend I went to the lake. It was a pleasure to sit on the shore and look at the boats.
Again, my teacher, says that both are okay, but he strongly prefers to drop article. He says, "the boats" is fine since my reader can assume that a lake has boats and that I mean "the boats that were there at the time", but no article is better.
I am confused, how can both be possible? I am suspicious of that because I think only one can be correct at any time.
Could you please help me with the following?
I live near a bus terminal. It is hard to sleep at night because I keep on getting disturbed by buses.
I live near a bus terminal. It is hard to sleep at night because I keep on getting disturbed by the buses.
My English tutor, says that either is acceptable and that he prefers just "buses" without article. "The buses" means "the buses that use this terminal", but "buses" is correct and better, because I have already established that I live near a bus terminal and the the reader will know what I mean.
This weekend I went to the lake. It was a pleasure to sit on the shore and look at boats.
This weekend I went to the lake. It was a pleasure to sit on the shore and look at the boats.
Again, my teacher, says that both are okay, but he strongly prefers to drop article. He says, "the boats" is fine since my reader can assume that a lake has boats and that I mean "the boats that were there at the time", but no article is better.
I am confused, how can both be possible? I am suspicious of that because I think only one can be correct at any time.
Top answer
In the first case, both "buses" and "the buses" seem fine to me. I disagree that "buses" is necessarily better. In the second case I would be strongly inclined to include the article.
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In the first case, both "buses" and "the buses" seem fine to me. I disagree that "buses" is necessarily better.
In the second case I would be strongly inclined to include the article. (To me, "look at boats" seems to suggest that you are inspecting them with a view to buying one, or something like that, which is not consistent with the rest of the context.)
In the second case I would be strongly inclined to include the article. (To me, "look at boats" seems to suggest that you are inspecting them with a view to buying one, or something like that, which is not consistent with the rest of the context.)
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morrI am confused, how can both be possible?Both can indeed be possible. When it comes to the use of the definite article with plural nouns in English, there are many situations when the choice is left to the writer.
In your first example, both buses and "the buses" is correct, although I agree with GPY - there is no reason to prefer "buses" to "the
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