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I posted a question here a few hours ago. The title of the question is
What does 'sus' mean in this sentence "People who joined Facebook after 2017 are sus."?
Later, a community bot modified the word this to the.
I am a bit confused. Why should I choose "the" instead of "the"? I tried to search for answers but sometimes it's very clear, like "the bus" vs "this bus", but in this case, I'm really confused.
Thanks for any tips!
This is a good question; the difference is subtle. Your original question was perfectly understandable, but it was corrected because it's not completely grammatical. I think I understand the reason, but it's possible I am wrong.
"this sentence" is a complete noun phrase, and would require a relative pronoun after it if you want to add something, like "...in this sentence that reads 'People who joined Facebook..." but you just stuck a separate sentence right after it with no connecting word.
"the sentence, 'People who joined Facebook..." is a valid noun phrase by itself, though.
The sentence you used was correct and understandable. The word "this" is a piece of discourse deixis that refers to the quoted sentence. You should have used a colon before the quote. That would set the quote off as a separate sentence.
There's no mistake in using "the", but little improvement.
