I'd like to expand the example with a furniture catalog a bit to ask some more questions about article use. Consider the following variant, which may not be terribly consistent in style (full vs. shortened sentences) but aggregates many real-world examples that I deal with:
Part No. | Name | Description
000001 | FOO BAR | Wooden chair. Suitable for medium-intensity bar fights. Can also be mounted to (the) floor securely to prevent use as (a) weapon. Seat protected with (a) fabric cover. (The/A) decorative binding lends the chair an elegant look. Anti-skid pads attached.
The questions are:
1) To what extent can I omit articles here? My gut feeling is that it's OK to omit them where I put parentheses (and not OK where I didn't), but I'm not sure.
2) If I do use an article at the first position in the penultimate sentence, before "decorative binding", should it be definite or indefinite? On the one hand, the binding has not been introduced anywhere. On the other hand, it is a known part of a specific product, so it is kind of assumed.
3) What about the "fabric cover" part in the third sentence from the end? Here I feel that I cannot use "the". But, again, the cover is included in this specific product and therefore is sort of similar to (2).
Part No. | Name | Description
000001 | FOO BAR | Wooden chair. Suitable for medium-intensity bar fights. Can also be mounted to (the) floor securely to prevent use as (a) weapon. Seat protected with (a) fabric cover. (The/A) decorative binding lends the chair an elegant look. Anti-skid pads attached.
The questions are:
1) To what extent can I omit articles here? My gut feeling is that it's OK to omit them where I put parentheses (and not OK where I didn't), but I'm not sure.
2) If I do use an article at the first position in the penultimate sentence, before "decorative binding", should it be definite or indefinite? On the one hand, the binding has not been introduced anywhere. On the other hand, it is a known part of a specific product, so it is kind of assumed.
3) What about the "fabric cover" part in the third sentence from the end? Here I feel that I cannot use "the". But, again, the cover is included in this specific product and therefore is sort of similar to (2).
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