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Reegis Posted 9 years ago
Grammar

Articles: "Engaged tone again"

Hello.

Is the sentence below correct?

Engaged tone again!

It looks suspicious to me because there is no article before 'tone', and I looked it up and it seems that 'tone' is countable:
http://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/definition/english/tone_1?q=tone (6)
Could you please explain why it is correct or why it is not?
  

Top answer

Please provide the context. What you have written is not a sentence.

— BarbaraPA

  • Please provide the context.
  • What you have written is not a sentence.
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7 Answers
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Please provide the context.

What you have written is not a sentence.
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The context is that one person is trying to call another one and always receives a busy signal.

You are right. Of course we need a predicate to have a sentence, so let me ask differently - is this English phrase/expression correct or should we add 'a' or 'the' before 'engaged tone'?
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Reegisshould we add 'a' or 'the' before 'engaged tone'?
No. When speaking in commonly used sentence fragments, sometimes articles are dropped along with the rest of the sentence.

CJ
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I can always rely on your knowledge:)

Is there any rule of thumb when we can/should drop articles in similar sentence fragments? Or is it just a matter of a speaker's taste and both 'Engaged tone again!' and 'An engaged tone again!' are equally acceptable?
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ReegisIs there any rule of thumb when we can/should drop articles in similar sentence fragments? Or is it just a matter of a speaker's taste and both 'Engaged tone again!' and 'An engaged tone again!' are equally acceptable?
It seems to me that we drop a contiguous part of the sentence that is in our minds. That can include an article or not.

It is a
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Ahaaaaaa... Now you truly enlightened me. From time to time I have seen some shortened versions of different sentences and never knew whether it was correct or not.

Thanks
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I'm sure I"m not the only person who did not know "engaged tone" is a synonym for "busy signal."

I'd say "Still busy!" or "Busy again!"
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