The missing article

Emulating newspaper headlines in omitting articles has become
fashionable. In the phrases "the writing of abstracts", "the
assassination of Lincoln", or "the theft of three paintings", no good
writer would dream of dispensing with the definite article before the
first noun. Why, then, does one so often read sentences such as "Drug
X was used in treatment of acromegaly" or "Follow-up of patients
revealed that ..."? Using nouns as adjectives enables articles to be
omitted, e.g. in "liver disease symptoms" or "child abuse prevention",
but confusion lurks: Does "abstract writing" refer to the writing of
abstracts or to writing that is abstract (cf. abstract painting)? Does
"patient follow-up" involve patients or patience? Does "child
psychiatrist" designate a psychiatrist for children or a medical
wunderkind? Besides, the piling up of modifiers leads to odd or
unsightly constructions, e.g. "sexual function disorder treatment" or
"mixed connective tissue disease diagnosis"; in the former instance, a
hyphen ("sexual-function disorder treatment") may at least prevent the
reader from wondering what the sexual treatment of a function disorder
consists of; in the latter, a sensible remedy is to write "the
diagnosis of mixed connective-tissue disease", with the article and a
hyphen. (Apropos of hyphens, "fried-fish merchant" avoids the
ambiguity of "fried fish merchant", where the merchant might appear to
be fried instead of the fish.)

CW
.

Relevant Pages

  • Wifeys Sustainability Column in our local paper{NDC}
    ... I though some of you folks would appriciate some of these articles my wife ... has been writing in our local paper......they have been well recieved by ... here's an article about censurship of one of her paintings a while back ...
    (rec.music.gdead)
  • Roots-Key Special Issue Winter 2007
    ... issue, "Recreating Your Ancestral Shtetl", in December, 2007. ... Daniel Wagner and Israel Pickholtz, writing from Israel. ... past and build a bridge to the future, with articles by Joyce Field, ...
    (soc.genealogy.jewish)
  • Re: (off topic) Inside the White House - gossip
    ... > I've gotten a lot of good info from articles by Doug Thompson ... > carried away since he started writing for Capitol Hill Blue. ... Rove is kind of irrelevant to the supporters. ... They support Bush, not Rove. ...
    (soc.culture.thai)
  • Re: OOP/OOD Philosophy
    ... >I think the criticism is of writing which is largely polemical, ... >it would be fair to put much of the writing by XP proponents in this ... >of articles on the subject appear to fall into this category. ...
    (comp.object)
  • Re: How can we assist in making Borland Press happen?
    ... for books since Delphi 6 orso - and don't get me started on the Kylix ... Writing a book takes an enormous amount of time (and then ... and makes very little money. ... "we" have to do with the free articles that I can publish ...
    (borland.public.delphi.non-technical)