Plain English was [Re: [Sussex] Grammar (was Gnupg and it's use)]

[Mark Harrison (Groups)]

On Sun, 2005-11-27 at 04:00 +0000, John D. wrote:
> 
> > Also I dont think NAVY is a acronym like RAF , the RAF is the Royal 
> > Air Force the Navy is just that, the Navy .  
> 
> No it's not. It's _THE_ Royal Navy. Just like postage stamps, we
> don't 
> need to put a nationality. So the acronym is RN.

Quite apart from being the official title, it's also good grammar :-)

Actually, the difference between "a" and "the" is another of those
things that is commonly mistaken.

The rule is, 

- Use "the" when the thing being described is the only one of its type,
- Use "a/an" when it is one of several, unless using "a" would be
ridiculous, in which case use neither but provide enough additional
information to make "the" appropriate.

Examples:

- The Royal Navy (the only one of its type in the Anglosphere)
- A navy (one of many navies)
- The Royal Navy is a modern navy (combining both)
- Harrison's, a Swiss Bank is correct
- Harrison's, the Swiss Bank is incorrect
- "Ford, the US car manufacturer" is incorrect, however...
- "Ford, a US car manufacturer" is ridiculous, because everyone can be
assumed to know what Ford is, hence the best advise it to say something
like
- "Ford, the second largest US car manufacturer" is correct (since there
can clearly only be one second-largest US car manufacturer)

Mark, trying to avoid being an Alan Davis incident, Harrison