English-o-metrics

Use of a mathematical model in the English language.

It is customary to write items in a series with required articles. For example, we write 'a book, a pen, a rubber and a bag'. Mathematically speaking, the article 'a' is common to all the items. So put in a mathematical format, it would be like 'a (book, pen, rubber and bag)' and would be 'a book, pen, rubber and bag' with the removal of brackets/parentheses. (However, mathematics does not allow this.) Both expressions are acceptable.

Suppose we write 'a book, a pen, an erasure and a bag'. Here, the article 'a' cannot be taken as a common factor because there is 'an' before 'erasure'. So it would be wrong to say 'a book, pen, erasure and bag'.