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   ENGLISH_TUTOR      English Tutoring for Students of the Eng      4,347 messages   

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   Message 2,001 of 4,347   
   Paul Quinn to alexander koryagin   
   What is behind short URL?   
   28 Jun 16 20:11:48   
   
   Hi! Alexander,   
      
   On 06/28/2016 06:08 PM, you wrote to Anton Shepelev:   
      
    ak>    
      
    AK>>> BTW, what a program do you use when you write your messages?   
    AS>> It's my turn to correct you: omit the 'a'.   
      
    ak> Let's  ask Englishmen! ;) After all, when we say "What a lovely day   
    ak> today, isn't?" we use the article 'a'. I suspect the article 'a' makes   
    ak> my question more exact. But if we ask about an uncountable word we don't   
    ak> use 'a'. For instance, "what rubbish!"   
      
   I'm not an Englishman, but I have had continuous experience in an   
   English-speaking environment for over 55 years.  :)   
      
   In this case, Anton is correct.  The 'a' is superfluous.  That is probably   
   because the program would be chosen from an uncountable collection of   
   available programs.  If you wanted some precision, you could have asked using   
   "...what particular program...".   
      
   Cheers,   
   Paul.   
      
   --- Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux i686; rv:31.0) Gecko/20100101 Thunderbird/31.4.0   
    * Origin: Quinn's Rock vBox - sunny side up on the bookcase (3:640/1384)   

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