A friend had this status update recently on facebook – “Amazing how “online” has killed the phrase “on the line”. Even answering machines now say “please stay on line”. The Wren & Martin in me shudders to hear such things.”
No, it is not about online and not online. It is about articles slowly exiting English. Just we merrily verbized every single possible and impossible word, we are now on to deleting articles from sentences. Has anyone else noticed this?
Few is now used to mean ‘a few’, ditto with little and such.
I remember a piece by young director Manish Acharya just after ‘Loins of Punjab Presents’ (was it in Time Out?) went on to be declared a huge hit about how a producer had called him and said “I want to work with you – because you are future”.
So, is future articleless?