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Englishnewbie Posted 14 years ago
Grammar

Quality of life

Hello,

Still having issues with countable and unountable nouns...

Macmillina dictionary says "quality of life" is uncountable, but

I find some instances in Atlantics editorials that use

For A better quality of life, we should ...

They use A for this...

Is there something I am not understanding?
Thank you
  

Top answer

Yes; you seem to think that uncountable nouns never take an article. They often do. Rover

— Rover_KE

  • Yes; you seem to think that uncountable nouns never take an article.
  • They often do.
  • Rover
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9 Answers
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Yes; you seem to think that uncountable nouns never take an article.

They often do.

Rover
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This is a huge problem for me.

I just don't understand why these dictionaries say that no "a" article should be used for uncountable nouns...

Sigh...
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They mean, you can't say 'a music', 'a happiness', 'a/an advice'

But look at carefully at the sentence:
'...offers a better quality of life...'

When we use an adjective, qualifying the noun, we do use articles.
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TerryxpressThey mean, you can't say 'a music', 'a happiness', 'a/an advice'But look at carefully at the sentence:'...offers a better quality of life...'When we use an adjective, qualifying the noun, we do use articles.
Yes, but not always and that's the hard part.

We all should strive for a better quality of life. (quality of life is modified b
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Ok, Thanks guys for throughly confusing me... Emotion: sad
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"It was a grief he had not felt before" seems like a shortened form of "It was A TYPE (or KIND) OF grief [THAT] he had not felt before"; in that case, the A makes sense... I think!
"What a pity!" is perhaps a shortened form of "What a GREAT pity!". Does that make a difference? Also, PITY seems to be a special kind of noun, in that "That's A PITY" is equivalent to "That's UNFORTUNATE", and UNFO
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Hi,

I don't claim to be an expert, but here is how I see it.

By adding the adjective, the writer is showing that he is thinking there are different kinds of qualities of life.
eg a better quality of life
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Just to add some formality: there is a term for this. It is called reclassification. A normally non-count noun can be reclassified as a count noun involving a semantic shift to mean 'an appropriate unit of' or 'a kind/form/brand of'.

This is a nice coffee.
Two coffees, please.
I like South American coffees best.
What a coffee!
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