By Articles, Nouns

Hi,How would you justify the use of hyphens to denote what seems to be a noun? I think this string of words can be thought as a big noun made of little parts. Could it be in quotations without hyphens and would it make a difference or no difference? I think a problem might result if put...

Yes, yes, yes. I know that. Maybe I used the wrong words to express what I was trying to say. Maybe I should have said it as follows:Only an uncountable noun can be used without an article (if it's singular).The formulation in sea uses no article.Therefore it treats sea as...

I don't get e-mail notifications from most of my posts on this forum but I saw your response as I was browsing what is going on at the moment. Please forgive me if I don't always respond to your questions. My e-mails have worked haphazardly after the face-lift in February. I don't...

Whoops! That's true. Or is it? I wonder what I was thinking. To my ear, in sea (without any article) makes sea uncountable, and my brain doesn't accept sea as uncountable, so I feel an article must be added. (Given that adding the doesn't change an uncountable to countable, I...

The can be used with uncountable nouns, in fact it can be used with all nouns, so countability is not a factor here. In the sea is simply an idiomatic collocation. Sea is one of the many words that are often used with the. However, if the reference is to the life of sailors, no article is...

.When do you use 'tax' without an article-- when you are speaking of the uncountable, taxation.and 'taxes' with a possibility of making it a countable noun?-- when you are speaking of the individual law and consequent tax imposed.

Hi, When do you use 'tax' without an article and 'taxes' with a possibility of making it a countable noun? Thank you.

Technically "into" is more correct since the laundry will be wholly inside the washing machine, but native speakers will often substitute "in" for "into" in this context.

Think of which article ("the" or "a") you would use were the word "second" omitted in each case. The articles in these examples do not refer to the word "second", but rather to the nouns they are modifying. The speakers are essentially referring to...

No, I mean food. Food is usually uncountable too. Your analysis was just fine until you got to the part about the uncountable noun. As I said, "apple" doesn't work nearly as well as an uncountable noun as other food items, like steak, rice or watermelon. Jack: I think you really...