What articles I should use if I'm talking about customers of our company.
Example:
"In this situation ask a/the customer to... "
"A/The customer provided a new information"
"Call to a/the customers phone number"
I'm talking about all customers that will face this situation, and not specific one. It's not that somebody asked me about particular situation with specific client. Imagine If I'm writing a documentation and mentioning our clients - what articles should I use?
Articles A/The if we are talking about customer of our company
Moderator: EC
-
jackieblack
- Member
- Posts: 2
- Joined: Sun Oct 04, 2020 11:01 am
- Status: Learner of English
-
Joe
- Admin/Teacher
- Posts: 1797
- Joined: Thu Dec 18, 2003 6:56 am
- Status: Teacher of English
- Location: England
Re: Articles A/The if we are talking about customer of our company
Normally "userguides" are written in this way, with definitive article "the":jackieblack wrote: ↑Sun Oct 04, 2020 11:58 am What articles I should use if I'm talking about customers of our company.
Example:
"In this situation ask a/the customer to... "
"A/The customer provided a new information"
"Call to a/the customers phone number"
I'm talking about all customers that will face this situation, and not specific one. It's not that somebody asked me about particular situation with specific client. Imagine If I'm writing a documentation and mentioning our clients - what articles should I use?
"In this situation ask the customer to..."
"The customer provided new information..."
"Call the customer's phone number..."
"We are not wholly bad or good, who live our lives under Milk Wood :-| " — Dylan Thomas, Under Milk Wood
eBooks: English Prepositions List | Essential Business Words | Learn English in Seven
eBooks: English Prepositions List | Essential Business Words | Learn English in Seven
-
OccamsRazor
- Member
- Posts: 12
- Joined: Thu Oct 15, 2020 11:25 pm
- Status: Teacher of English
Re: Articles A/The if we are talking about customer of our company
"Customers" is nonspecific and refers to any customer anywhere in the world.
"A customer" is nonspecific and to ONE of any customer in the world.
"The customer", "our customers", "their customers", "Hispanic customers", etc., are all specific and refer to a subset of all the customers in the world.
If you say "the customer", then you are being specific. In that case, you and I must have previously talked about some group of customers, thus narrowing down generic "customers" to "a customer" from one of "the customers" that we are talking about.
"The customer" can have TWO meanings.
One, we are referring to Joe, a customer that we have been discussing -- one specific customer.
Two, "the customer" can be used as a generic reference to any representative customer from a class of customers.
If a company is talking about "the customer" in general, they are using it in Sense Two -- one of their customers who do business with them, like using "John Doe" to represent any male human.
"A customer" is nonspecific and to ONE of any customer in the world.
"The customer", "our customers", "their customers", "Hispanic customers", etc., are all specific and refer to a subset of all the customers in the world.
If you say "the customer", then you are being specific. In that case, you and I must have previously talked about some group of customers, thus narrowing down generic "customers" to "a customer" from one of "the customers" that we are talking about.
"The customer" can have TWO meanings.
One, we are referring to Joe, a customer that we have been discussing -- one specific customer.
Two, "the customer" can be used as a generic reference to any representative customer from a class of customers.
If a company is talking about "the customer" in general, they are using it in Sense Two -- one of their customers who do business with them, like using "John Doe" to represent any male human.