To The or not to The.....?

[Geoff Hart <ghart -at- videotron -dot- ca>]

Victoria Wroblewski wondered: <<In the past, speaking about our Widget 
XYZ (a combined software/hardware solution-type thing) I've leaned 
towards calling it "Widget XYZ".  It's our product, trademark and all, 
and darn it I like the Microsoft Manual of Style.  Marketing, it 
appears, calls it "the Widget XYZ".>>

The solution would be clearer if you take a step back and examine 
standard English grammar. Compare, for example, "Geoff answered this 
question" and "the Geoff who lives in Canada [i.e., not the other 
Geoff] answered this question". In short, this is an issue of using a 
definite article (the) with a proper noun, and Microsoft (which I don't 
own) probably refers to this somewhere. In standard (non-Microsoft 
grammar), the definite article is generally only necessary when there's 
more than one possibility and you need to make a distinction.

In your specific case, you'd probably say things such as "Widget X 
renoberates the tarsi" versus "the X widget renoberates the tarsi 
whereas the Y widget de-renoberates the tarsi". <g*> Note that in the 
latter case, X and Y (not "widget") are the proper nouns, whereas 
"widget" is a generic noun. If, however, "Widget" (capped) is part of 
the registered trademark, the "the" is unnecessary because there is no 
other widget named XYZ--in general, the only case where the definite 
article is necessary is if there were two different widgets being 
discussed.

* Bonus points for anyone who can make either phrase make sense. <g>

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Geoff Hart   ghart -at- videotron -dot- ca
(try geoffhart -at- mac -dot- com if you don't get a reply)
www.geoff-hart.com
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