Hi alexander -- on Mar 30 2018 at 21:21, you wrote:

ak> -----Beginning of the citation-----
ak> https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/29/world/europe/russia-expels-diplom
ak> ats.html

[...]

ak> Why "_a_ confrontation" not "the confrontation"?

Firstly, this is (again) garbage writing. You can't escalate a
confrontation; a confrontation either is or is not. Same thing with
"reached a crescendo" (a phrase I often see). A crescendo is an
increase in volume over time and yes you can reach the beginning of a
crescendo in music, but as the journalists (hack, spit) use it they seem to
think a crescendo is a peak; a point in time.

This type of abysmal writing is a hot button of mine, and I'm going to
suggest that all here should be extremely careful of using journalistic
writing for any sort of exemplar of correct usage. Nine times out of ten
such writing is crap.

To answer your specific question, Alexander, using "a" suggests
that this is one of many confrontations while using "the" tends
to suggest there's only one. It's not a strong argument, and really either
could be used.



Cheers... Dallas

--- timEd/NT 1.30+