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The president underscored the need for (A) a constructive and a realistic dialogue (B) of issues of global interest.(C)

My book says part (B) of sentence is wrong, we don't need to use a here, I agree with that but isn't part (C) also wrong ? I guess it should be dialogue ON issues of global interest. Am I correct ?

Edit : by a I am referring to second a, the one which is with realistic.

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  • Your book is just making things up. It's entirely a stylistic choice whether to include the article (a dialogue). And there's no fixed rule regarding how you might link that element to issues of global interest (you could "validly" use of, on, about, concerning, regarding, etc.).
    – FumbleFingers
    Commented Jun 8, 2017 at 14:04
  • Perhaps a moderator deleted because my own comment has been deleted. Why my comment was deleted, did I break any rule of SE ?
    – user212388
    Commented Jun 8, 2017 at 14:19
  • I don't know. I've seen nothing here or on your other recent question that might break any rules. Eventually, most of these comments will probably be deleted, but the mods don't usually bother much about even blatantly Off-Topic comments while a new question is "settling in". My first comment here isn't much of an "answer", but I'd expect it to be left at least until someone posts a more comprehensive response.
    – FumbleFingers
    Commented Jun 8, 2017 at 14:25
  • I don't understand the structure of the question. It's not clear what parts of the sentence (A), (B), and (C) refer to.
    – Andrew
    Commented Jun 8, 2017 at 16:15
  • I removed the comments because they were made obsolete when you updated your question. Comments are meant to be temporary, so you did the right thing by updating your question. I may have deleted them too quickly. I'm on my mobile and not quite as effective as I am on a bigger screen.
    – ColleenV
    Commented Jun 8, 2017 at 17:38

1 Answer 1

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"A constructive dialogue of those issues" certainly is unusual.

My preferred preposition to introduce the subject of a dialogue is "about", by a wide margin. However, I see by this Ngram that it's less common than "on". The participle "concerning" could work too, but is significantly less common. I don't think any of them would raise any eyebrows, though.

dialogue

Note that in the use of "dialogue" as a verb (business jargon, not universally accepted), "about" is the only natural follow-up. This is probably because it appears to be an excrescent synonym for "talk".

We need to dialogue about your use of resources.

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  • I wasn't talking about the 'of' which is preceding interest. I know 'of global interest' is correct but I was concerned about the 'of' which is preceding 'issues' . I guess you didn't read question properly.
    – user212388
    Commented Jun 20, 2017 at 3:28
  • @user212388 My mistake. Edited the answer to address that one instead.
    – Luke Sawczak
    Commented Jun 20, 2017 at 3:36

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