Which of the following is correct?
He is a quiet, polite and disciplined boy.
Or
He is a quiet, polite and a disciplined boy.
Personally, I think the first one is right. But still wanted to be sure.
-
1As indicated by the answer below, it's not very idiomatic to re-introduce a repeated / predictable element (a here) if you've already "deleted" it from any preceding items in a list. But this is essentially a matter of stylistic choices, not "unbreakable grammatical rules".– FumbleFingersCommented May 22, 2019 at 14:47
Add a comment
|
1 Answer
It would have to be either:
"A quiet, a polite, and a disciplined boy."
or
"A quiet, polite, disciplined boy."
-
1I'm not sure why it would "have" to be written without the optional conjunction if you eliminate the repeated articles. Commented May 22, 2019 at 15:12
-
@geekahedron, you could write "he is quiet, polite, and a disciplined boy", but to my ear, once you have introduced a list of categories to which the boy belongs, it is not really good form to also either interleave a list of descriptions of the boy himself, or else to use the 'a' inconsistently within the same list.– SteveCommented May 22, 2019 at 15:25
-
I was referring to the conjunction, not the article. The first sentence in the original question ("He is a quiet, polite and disciplined boy") is perfectly fine. Commented May 22, 2019 at 17:16
-
No, it doesn't have to be one of those versions. There is nothing ungrammatical about the second version in the question. It's stylistically awkward and unidiomatic, but it's not wrong. Commented May 22, 2019 at 18:34