1 Mar 2011

The "The" Conundrum

The-times-111751
The above image is great! The title of the paper is "The Times" and therefore can be labeled "The Times", both in and out of conversation. Here are just a few cases where the word "the" resembles beating yourself with a stupid stick.

  • The Congress
  • The iPhone
  • The moleskine
  • The Internet (all the cool kids use Internet because some cool kid cut off "the" from Facebook)

The issue comes down to using "the" to convey generality when it is almost always used in the specific. The next time you reach into the shriveling word-bag slung around your head, try and use "an" or "a" to convey an arbitrary item.