{"id":6502,"date":"2014-07-08T09:52:49","date_gmt":"2014-07-07T23:52:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wordconstructions.com.au\/blog\/?p=6502"},"modified":"2014-07-08T15:38:28","modified_gmt":"2014-07-08T05:38:28","slug":"grammar-makes-for-a-busy-pharmacist","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.wordconstructions.com.au\/blog\/2014\/07\/grammar-makes-for-a-busy-pharmacist\/","title":{"rendered":"Grammar makes for a busy pharmacist!"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last night I saw a TV ad for some (legal) drugs for children’s colds.<\/p>\n

\"Pharmacist<\/a>

Pharmacists must pay careful attention to details…<\/p><\/div>\n

It was nothing particularly out of the ordinary until I read the fine print <\/a>at the end, which was grammatically poor.<\/p>\n

For children under two years, contact the pharmacist.<\/em><\/p>\n

Obviously there is only one pharmacist we could ask – must be a mighty busy person though if we only have one in Australia!<\/p>\n

The grammar…<\/h2>\n

In short, using the word ‘the’ implies there is one so we correctly write ‘the Prime Minister is visiting the Governor General’.<\/p>\n

When used as an article for a noun, the word ‘the’ signifies that the relevant noun is either unique or somewhat special. For example, the Tour de France<\/a> is the<\/em> long distance bike race – obviously, there are other long distance bike races but the Tour De France is the ultimate and best known one so using ‘the’ emphasises its importance.<\/p>\n

So the ad would have been better telling us to contact ‘your pharmacist’ or ‘a pharmacist’.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

* Image courtesy of 123rf<\/a><\/span><\/address>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last night I saw a TV ad for some (legal) drugs for children’s colds. It was nothing particularly out of the ordinary until I read the fine print at the end, which was grammatically poor. For children under two years, contact the pharmacist. Obviously there is only one pharmacist we could ask – must be […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[70],"tags":[855,376,125,1704,1703],"class_list":["post-6502","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-grammar-details-2","tag-ad","tag-details","tag-grammar","tag-pharmacist","tag-the"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t