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Which should I use?

  1. Top restaurants within 5 minute walk

  2. Top restaurants within a 5 minute walk

For broader context, this is to be used as a section heading in an app, and so adding an article actually complicates the code, since it now requires the coder to programmatically distinguish between a and an based on the number falling between within and minute, since numbers beginning with one, eight-, or eleven would need the longer article.

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    Since you're using headlinese, 'need' becomes hard to define. I'd say the inclusion of the article improves how it sounds, but doesn't increase clarity.
    – Edwin Ashworth
    Commented Nov 21, 2016 at 22:36
  • @EdwinAshworth, thanks for the reply. To be more precise, would it be grammatically incorrect to omit an article, or is this a matter of taste/style/sound?
    – New Dev
    Commented Nov 21, 2016 at 22:42
  • It's best to say 'grammaticality doesn't really apply to labels, headlines etc'.
    – Edwin Ashworth
    Commented Nov 21, 2016 at 22:48
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    @EdwinAshworth Actually, headlinese is a serious area of study among linguistics, with many scholarly papers examining its usage. Headlinese has different grammar rules, but it is not true to say it has no grammar rules at all.
    – Laurel ♦
    Commented Nov 22, 2016 at 2:00
  • If you bother to search here, there are easily a dozen questions about headlinese, many with excellent answers.
    – Hot Licks
    Commented Nov 22, 2016 at 3:40

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I don't have the reputation to comment, but I wanted to add that the article is actually quite easy to determine programmatically. Use a small library to convert the duration to English (e.g. for Ruby, use Humanize) then prefix "an" if it begins with a vowel, or "a" for a consonant.

Regarding the actual question, I don't honestly think it matters. Just so long as you do that consistently across all headings in your app.

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