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In my software, If user edits some content of a document and clicks close icon without saving the changes he made (i.e. without clicking the save icon first), the text of message that I display to the user is as follows:

“Leaving this page will discard unsaved changes.”

Should I use ‘the unsaved changes’ instead of simple ‘unsaved changes’? Does this sentence look correct?

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    I think this may be off-topic because the question is merely about using an article in a sentence or not.
    – msparer
    Commented Jan 20, 2015 at 12:26
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    No, you should just save the changes and keep them undoable.
    – Crissov
    Commented Jan 20, 2015 at 14:17

3 Answers 3

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Just unsaved changes seems to be the one that reads more easily.

Your original gut feeling was right all along!

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It's somewhat pedantic, but gramatically "the unsaved changes" assumes the user knows exactly which unsaved changes you're referring to, whereas "unsaved changes" is general in nature referring to any unsaved changes you have.

So I'd go with "unsaved changes" both because it's more correct, but also because it's shorter, and shorter is usually better than longer.

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Are you sure you want to navigate away from this page?

Any \ All changes will be lost if you leave this page without saving.

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