4

In the following sentence:

I decided not to vote for your candidate for president.

I thought that the article "the" is needed for the word "president", because there is usually only one president. But I found that using the article is not correct, or at least not preferred.

Why does this sentence lack the article?

Improve this question
5
  • President, mayor, Member of Parliament, chairman, etc, are the names of positions or posts which do not require articles. He became chairman, she was elected mayor, etc.
    – Michael Harvey
    Commented Dec 21, 2021 at 11:19
  • What is the source? Could you add a link to it IN your question, please?
    – Mari-Lou A
    Commented Dec 21, 2021 at 11:38
  • @Mari-LouA It is from Duolingo Russian course (learn Russian on English) - forum.duolingo.com/comment/11895305/…
    – Blaszard
    Commented Dec 21, 2021 at 11:40
  • It's an odd sentence, it could be worded better, e.g. "I didn't vote for Johnson to be the leader of the party / prime minister of the UK.” AND... “I didn't vote Johnson for Prime Minister”, “Johnson became Prime Minister in 2019” all forms are acceptable.
    – Mari-Lou A
    Commented Dec 21, 2021 at 11:54
  • I think that the definite article is used when we identify which PM, President, monarch we are referring to and nearly always at the beginning of a sentence. The Indian Prime Minister, the Queen of Denmark, the President of the USA, the Chairman/person of XY etc.
    – Mari-Lou A
    Commented Dec 21, 2021 at 11:59

2 Answers 2

Reset to default
1

The sentence as it stands is thus.

  • I decided not to vote for your candidate for president.

A candidate stands for office. There is an implied "the office of" here.

  • I decided not to vote for your candidate for the office of president.

It is very usual to leave out that part. Usually people will only put that in when they are trying to be formal, or when they are using it to to make a speech and they want to have a particular rhetorical effect. It becomes a verbal fanfare that gives an annoucement an air of seriousness. And sometimes a newspaper will put it in a headline for siimilar motivations.

  • I give you our candidate for the office of president.

You can either put in the "the office of" part or you can leave it out. You can't put in only part of it. So the following would be wrong.

  • I decided not to vote for your candidate for the president.
Improve this answer
0

"The president" refers to the person holding the office. "President" refers to the office (position) itself.

Improve this answer
1
  • I think some more clarification is needed in your answer. For example, with a title, "president" (without an article) can refer to the person, not the office: "President Biden signed the legislation."
    – MarcInManhattan
    Commented Dec 25, 2021 at 19:33

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .