"This" Grammar

[tongodeon]

On Monday night bsdcat and I had dinner at Higuma, where we noticed a sign near the door. The sign was correct - "Please leave strollers at the door" - and then they snatched defeat from the jaws of victory by "correcting" the sign to make it incorrect by adding "the" before "strollers".

Comments

[mister_borogove]

"Due to limited space..." connotes to me "Due to the general, universal problem of limited space which we're all familiar with..."

"Due to the limited space..." connotes to me "Due to the limited space right here in the restaurant..."

So either one works for me.

[cdk]

I think one would use the definite article if there were several spaces, but only the limited space was the reason for the request. I think "Due to space limitations..." would be better.

Also, although it's rampantly popular, using "due to" like that is still incorrect, I believe. "Because of" would be better, or just "Space is limited."

[waider]

Why is "due to" incorrect in this context? I'm the office grammar nazi, and I can't really see a problem with using "due to" to mean "because of" (or, more directly thesaurified in this context, "owing to" <=> "because of" works quite nicely for me)

[cdk]

Hm, maybe it's one of those phantom rules imposed on me by an insane teacher at some point? I was always under the impression that only nouns could be due to ("the revolution was due to my pants" vs. "they revolted because of my pants.")

[mmcirvin]

"Due to" for "because of" is an occasionally cited usage peeve; I've heard people complain about it as well.

I used to get nervous about such things being "incorrect grammar" until I started reading Language Log (which takes apart usage peeve complaints on a regular basis).

[usernameguy]

To me, the word elided by "Due to limited space" is "our", not "the".

Signs are kinda like headline writing. They haul in a boatload of context.

[phlegm_noir]

Sometimes a faint red rectangle makes a noun definite.

[mmcirvin]

I'm guessing that she's thinking of "space" here as a count noun (like "banana" or "monkey"), whereas you're thinking of it as a mass noun (like "water" or "furniture") describing something that exists in some quantity within the store. In this context, I think most native US English speakers would think the latter way, though "space" can be used either way and neither interpretation is blatantly incorrect.

Unfortunately, it's still hard for me to cite any rule that would get you from there to the difference of opinion over the definite article, probably because I'm not a linguist. Sometimes we do use definite articles with mass nouns ("don't drink the water"). But intuitively I think that this is the direction in which the answer lies.

Also, English has a special compressed grammar used in signs, headlines and similar places, in which definite articles can be almost completely omitted (The Onion uses this to great comic effect). That may be part of what's going on as well.