Is it okay to omit an article after the word "or" because it is redundant? [duplicate]

Example 1: I will bring a pen, eraser, or pencil.

Example 2: I will bring a pen, an eraser, or a pencil.

Are the above two examples both correct grammatically? If so, which is better to use in academic/professional/technical writing? Does Example 2 seem redundant?

How about in the following cases?

Example 3: I will select a black, yellow, or red shirt.

Example 4: I will select a black, a yellow, or a red shirt.

Solution 1:

Both are correct, with both or and and. However, the versions with the repeated article would be stylistically favored if the conjoined elements were categorically disparate (unlike writing materials or colors, as in your examples). For example, "I'll bring a bottle of gin, a wool blanket, or a ream of paper", strange is it sounds, sounds better, to my ear at least, than "I'll bring a bottle of gin, wool blanket, or ream of paper."

Solution 2:

It's not really a matter of omitting an article. Grammatically, when you have one article, it's because there is just one noun phrase and a single article which comes before a single noun. This is because of the way conjunction works in language. When you combine several words or phrases with "and" or "or", you wind up with a single phrase of the same category as each of the things which were combined.

In your example "I will bring a pen, eraser, or pencil", when the three nouns "pen", "eraser", "pencil" are combined with "or", you get a noun (not a desk set), because the things you started with are nouns. Diagramming the structure, we have

[NP a [N [N pen] [N eraser] or [N pencil] ]

That is, "pen eraser or pencil" is a noun, so naturally it is preceded by a single article "a".

Alternatively, the same thing could be expressed with a NP which is a conjunction of three NPs, in which you naturally wind up with three articles, because each NP gets its own article:

[NP [NP a [N pen]] [NP an [N eraser]] or [NP a [N pencil]] ]

Similarly, for your example 3, there is a choice between using a single adjective formed by conjoining the three adjectives "black", "yellow", and "red", or a single noun formed by conjoining the three modified nouns "black shirt", "yellow shirt", and "red shirt".

Your example 4 is more complicated, since it is derived the preceding by Right Node Raising (RNR for short) by moving a single constituent shared by all conjuncts up higher in the structure.

I will select [NP [NP a black,] [NP a yellow,] or [NP a red,] shirt].

"shirt" is the node that is raised. It may be preceded by a comma, marking the intonation break that is heard in such constructions. (The analysis of RNR constructions is controversial.)

Solution 3:

The requirement for an article before every noun in a list is one the many prescriptive grammar rules that is only partially true in descriptive grammar. If the objects in a list are highly related, the article can safely be omitted in speech, but when they are not highly related, then the article is required even in speech. As it is primarily a prescriptive grammar rule, there are many teacher's that will swear that you must always have the article, and as such any written assignment in their class should follow their rules, but in other classes, you can just use them as you normally would in speech.