why would the tees own anything? Seriously. Check your style guide again. Tee is a word, not a single letter, so equating it with a single letter is wrong. Treat it like any other noun. It may be the letter tee, a golf tee, or a wife-beater tee. It is still a word and, specifically, a noun and should be treated the same as any other noun.

I'll just sit here and wait for the obvious to dawn on you.

Let's say a tooltip says:
"A deck must contain at least 20 cards."

To me, that "a" is detrimental since you have to skip it anyways, it doesn't convey any meaning. And since it is capitalized, it gathers more attention than it deserves. Tooltips are primarily informative and I would not hesitate to utilize "bad", heavy-handed and weird-looking grammar as long as the meaning is clear. Which is why I would preffer simply:

"Deck must contain at least 20 cards."

This sentence is perfect in a sense that you cannot omit any word without distorting its meaning. That didn't apply for the dropped "a".

My qualm could stem from the fact that Czech doesn't use indefinite articles so I am biased in a sense. But then many readers of the tooltip wouldn't be native speakers of English either so that isn't much of an issue. Still, if the natives of this forum think dropping "a" could harm my tooltips in some other way, SPEAK UP!

I also agree that dropping "an" is worse since it gives the sentence more flow than "a" does but dropping only "a" raises the issue of consistency that I wouldn't back on. So just stick to "a" and take it as a neccessary condition, with "an" being the sufficient one.

I agree with dropping those. In fact, I often drop "I" when agreeing with something in casual communications. But I would leave the "a" there in a manual unless it is bulleted and only remove it from the product itself. Your tool tip is a good example. If that were part of a bulleted list or were a hover over tooltip, I would remove the "a". But if it were just a sentence like "Decks consist of this that and the other. A deck must contain at least 20 cards." Then I would leave it in place.

@Maniac - Nothing is going to dawn on me because if you meant the letter t you should have said t's or Ts not tee's. Tee is a word (and specifically a noun) and must conform to the standards assigned to nouns.

@Ulytau - using the zero article specifically indicates that the noun is indefinite, so your approach is acceptable IMHO

".....and must conform to the standards assigned to nouns." Is it still not dawning?

Good. I wouldn't dare to omit anything in a stand-alone piece of information longer than one full sentence like the example you provided so I should've specified right ahead what I meant. Thanks for help.

Example of zero article commonly used in manuals.

Grasp drumstick. Place knife between thigh and body; cut through skin to joint. Separate thigh and drumstick at joint.

Adding articles wouldn't aid clarity IMHO so can be omitted safely.

@MeepMeep: "Clearly your parents failed to raise you up properly." The amount of times you have used similar expressions clearly says something about you. Think about it.

Maniac's example is an excellent one. So no, Maniac, still not dawning on me. Want to clarify please? To me tee is a word and, specifically, a noun and therefore the plural would be tees while the contraction or possessive would be tee's.

@MoMo: "If the person fails or runs away, then you can declare. But unfortunately, you act like a little kid, jumping up and down making premature claim. LoL. I think they should pass a law to punish the parents for failed kids."
This says a lot.

Draugnar - you said initially that "So it should be Is dot and tees (which not being a letter should not be apostropheed anyhow) cross" - I think you know realise that "The tee's cross is wobbly" is correct usage.

Careful Timur. #meepmeepismoronmoron is about to thank you and not see either the sarcasm or the insult in your statement.

First I don't "know realize" anything. Bit if you were saying the onwership of the dot by the i and the cross by the tee, then I accept that would be correct usage. It was kind of ambiguous as the saying is "dot your i's and cross your tees" or "make certain all your i's are crossed and your tees are dotted". Niether of those indicates posession. So sorry if you were indicating possession and I didn't get that.

What didn't help is that both dot and cross can be verbs or nouns.

I can see how the confusion arose. I will, of course, bask in the glory of going from "Epic Fucking Fail" to "I accept that would be correct usage".

: )

No, Maniac. You were referring to a common idiom, you were wrong. "Dot" and "cross" are used as verbs in that idiom, so your use of them as nouns was ineffectual in conveying your point. Given prior knowledge of the idiom, the logical conclusion to be drawn from your statement was that you didn't know how you were supposed to pluralize letters in writing and that you were bad at using verbs.

And actually, the idiom was misused even as Maniac applied it because it refers to plurals in both the i's and the tees ("Is are dotted and tees are crossed" or "Dot your i's and cross your tees". Therefore it should have been "Is' dots and tees' crosses" if you were intending to refer to the dots and crosses as nouns as well.

I mourn the fact that everyone focuses on dotting the i's and crossing the t's, but no one worries about dotting the j's. :<

...or dotting the colons and semicolons?

Is and Js are basically the same thing anyway.

Yeah, don't let the fact one is a consonant and one a vowel get in the way of your rhetoric, ghug. :-)

Exactly, J is a consonantization of I.

And is l a letterixation of 1 or vice versa?

letterization...

And yes I know J was a swash character typically used at the end of Roman numerals with repeated i's.

Ghug - the possessive apostrophe can relate to verbs as well as nouns. The young girl's throw is weak. The verb 'throw' relates to the girl and therefore we use the possessive apostrophes. In the same way the dotting of i's relates to the "i" so it is perfectly acceptable to say, "I's dot and tee's cross are the subject of a well known idiom."

The problem with you sentence "Is and Js are basically the same" is that it can cause confusion; is can be read as is.

At the end of the day, I used a sentence that pointed out that i's is a word. If I'd said is is a word it would have lost meaning.

I suppose these things are down to style, there are no absolute right and wrongs. As I've stated prior grammar is used to convey meaning, I think I was able to do that as effectively as anyone else without redrafting the sentence.

Except that the girl's throw refers to the noun form of throw.


2throw
noun

Definition of THROW


1

a: an act of throwing, hurling, or flinging