Re: Front page of lua.org

[Miles Bader <miles@...>]

Patrick Donnelly <batrick@batbytes.com> writes:
> On Sat, Feb 11, 2012 at 11:47 AM, Reuben Thomas <rrt@sc3d.org> wrote:
>
>> Strictly speaking, Lua has won *a* FrontLine 2011 award, not *the*
>> FrontLine 2011 award.
>>
>> Blowing your own trumpet is cool, but don't split the note!
>
> Considering there's only one qualifying category for Lua and that
> there is only one award given per year for that category, it seems to
> me the article adjective "the" is correct.

Yup.

Even generally, it's correct to use "the" in such a case because it
refers to the award as a singular entity (i.e., it's not a generic
term, and there are not multiple parties giving awards with the same
name!), even if multiple instances of that reward are awarded. One
typically says, for instance, that a solder "received the purple
heart" even if many other soldiers did as well.

-Miles

-- 
.Numeric stability is probably not all that important when you're guessing.