Talk:Ericsson R310s

Grammar disagreement

Hello, @Mardus: and @Khajidha:.

With regard to the argument which seems to be brewing about grammar in this article, can I suggest that either version is fine, as the meaning is the same in both cases, and that further edits do not need to be made?

In case you want adjudication: I am a native English speaker, and I can confirm that we do say "The <product name>" when describing electronic goods. I own an Ericsson R310s mobile handset, and when trying (and failing) to impress friends I would have said on numerous times things such as "The Ericsson R310s is waterproof, so you can use it in the shower!"

If you need proof of this, see my review of the Ericsson R310s, or this article which mentions the R310s, or this mention of an Ericsson press release.

To my eye, starting a sentence with "Ericsson R310s" without starting with "The" sounds rather odd. I would rather see the article keep the definite article, but the meaning is clear enough either way, so I politely request the article is not edited further on this front. --Bob (talk) 19:34, 26 June 2020 (UTC)

Mardus has changed numerous articles to remove "the" to match some rule he has found a d is misinteroreting to apply to cases it is not meant to cover despite being told by multiple native speakers (including myself) that his formulations are wrong.--Khajidha (talk) 21:27, 26 June 2020 (UTC)

It is not 'some rule', as you put it, but actual grammar. The problem with Wikipedia is, that apparently, most native speakers do not know better either, when it comes to <product name + model number>, and then rely on many non-natives' false interpretation of English to think that "it's okay". A lot of trade copy also relies on this falsity already in Wikipedia.

The definite article ("the") is not placed before proper names anywhere, because proper names in and of themsselves are definite by definition. If not before André 3000, then not before Ericsson R310s either, or before Nokia 2.2, or before iPhone SE. iPhone is a special case, because it uses a generic word in its name, with the letter 'i' prepended to it, leading to the i Phone (note the space), in which case, the definite article is correct there, but only there, and not in iPhone SE, where SE makes the noun implicitly definite.

At least two native English speakers at StackExchange here, and here, and here are very clear about not using the definite article before product names, unless the name if followed by a categorising generic word that is not part of the product name, such as the Nokia 2.2 phone, where phone is the core word; or the 2.2.

See also: Proper noun and common noun#Strong_and_weak_proper_names. -Mardus /talk 09:02, 22 July 2020 (UTC)

The three links you gave above do not actually cover this situation. As I said, you are misinterpreting the grammar advice you are finding. The examples given in those links are correct, but they are not analogous to the question at hand. --Khajidha (talk) 23:08, 31 July 2020 (UTC)