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Determiner

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jack112  #136901  Tue, 13 Sep 05 09:37 AM

1. The two utilities are (determiner) device manager and (determiner) component service. (Is this sentence correct without determiners? I think it is incorrect because those nouns are countable ?)

2. Device manager and component service are the two utilities. (If this is correct without determiners, why is #1 incorrect?)

Thanks.

  
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Mister Micawber  #136906  Tue, 13 Sep 05 10:21 AM

I'd use a/the in both sentences, Jack, because they are two (yes, countable) types of utilities.  If they are in fact the names of the utilities, however, then they should be capitalized instead:  Device Manager and Component Service.

On the other hand, there could be usage peculiar to computerspeak, which is not, as we all know, necessarily grammatically normal.

  
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