How to Write Right: Articles and Series

Advice from our Copyeditor

A problem lurks in this sentence: Sally has a cat, dog, boa constrictor and a canary. What’s wrong? If the elements of a series (Sally’s pets) are accompanied by articles — a, an, the — we can either repeat the article for every item in the series or use it only once, before the first item. Look at the sentence like this.

Sally has a:

cat;

dog;

boa constrictor;

a canary.

As they sing on Sesame Street, one of these things is not like the others. We have two choices for fixing it:

Sally has a cat, a dog, a boa constrictor and a canary.

Or:

Sally has a cat, dog, boa constrictor and canary.

Correct either way and quite a menagerie.