On Sunday, August 10, 2014, Tom Lane <
tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us> wrote:
David G Johnston <david.g.johnston@gmail.com> writes:
> Minor typo in error message - missing "an" before "even":
> "argument list must have even number of elements"
> should be
> "argument list must have an even number of elements"
I copied that wording from somewhere else in the same file...
We're not terribly consistent on including/omitting articles in primary
error messages, but I think the majority of cases omit them. In this
case, for example, why are you worried about adding "an" there but not
"the" in front of "argument list"?
regards, tom lane
Position, I guess.
I expect sentence fragments so whether it starts with "the" or not doesn't stand out as much as the missing "an" right in the middle.
I didn't even notice the missing "the" until you pointed it out. My mind just filled in the missing leading part but it doesn't fill in the gap in the middle in the same way.