I'm considering two different forms of a sentence:
In light of these limitations as described…
In the light of these limitations as described…
Which usage is correct?
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Sign up to join this communityI'm considering two different forms of a sentence:
In light of these limitations as described…
In the light of these limitations as described…
Which usage is correct?
In the US, “in light of” sounds natural and is well understood, while “in the light of” (if intended to mean “in consideration of” or “taking into account” rather than “illuminated by”) sounds awkward.
Snailboat's comment, that “BNC gives 1798 for in the light of and 125 for in light of. COCA gives 4678 for in light of and 1474 for in the light of”, suggests the opposite is true in the UK.
COCA = Corpus of Contemporary American English and BNC = British National Corpus (1,2).
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rather than italics because I consider search terms to be data, distinct in form from mentioned text. This can be seen in examples like everyone 's
, where the search term contains a space that the corresponding mentioned text would not, or in un american
, which may correspond to mentioned text like un-American with a hyphen and capitalization, or in queries containing operators such as colour / (color + colour)
, which don't correspond directly to any mentioned text.
– snailplane♦
Oct 23 '13 at 16:08
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formatting. I noticed it but didn't think of a reason to use it
– James Waldby - jwpat7
Oct 23 '13 at 16:18