"It follows a frantic 24 hours of talks between ambassadors, officials and foreign ministers."
Why is the indefinite article used before the word frantic when 24 hours are undoubtedly plural?
1
-
[FumbleFingers] spent a good two hours on the Internet, looking for examples of the usage. Obviously I didn't, but syntactically speaking I could have.– FumbleFingersFeb 23, 2022 at 11:36
Add a comment
|
1 Answer
If you say "A frantic period of talks" it might make more sense to you.
So the "24 hours" should be understood as a period of time. A frantic 36 hours or a frantic 10 minutes is similar.
If the hours were all separately frantic it would read something like "24 frantic hours". But there are no concrete rules here.
