Timeline for Definite article with numbered nouns

5 events

when toggle format	what		by	license	comment
Aug 30, 2023 at 0:50	comment	added	il--ya		I'm reading maths textbooks and see phrases like "the tangent to a circle at a point P is perpendicular to the radius at P" or "at the point P, the line y = x is a tangent to y = x sin x" all the time. Confused.
Jul 28, 2016 at 4:30	comment	added	Gary Botnovcan		I have to wonder what dialect finds "the team members Alice and Bob" acceptable, or what distinction you see that prevents only certain ill-defined designations from standing in literal apposition. It requires no special circumstances for alphanumeric designations to stand either in apposition or alone.
Jul 27, 2016 at 16:22	comment	added	Janus Bahs Jacquet		I think you're conflating two things here. There are restrictive appositives, which include team members Alice and Bob (and which do allow determiners such as the definite article, though it's not as common as null articles, I'd say); and then there are these pseudo-appositives that include the numbers and the “columns A and B”. In general, an appositive can replace the noun phrase it restricts without rendering the sentence unintelligible, which isn't true (except in certain circumstances) for the number ones here.
Jul 27, 2016 at 14:38	history	edited	Drew	CC BY-SA 3.0	added 77 characters in body
Jul 27, 2016 at 13:01	history	answered	Gary Botnovcan	CC BY-SA 3.0