grammaticality - Definite article with proper nouns, titles followed by a common noun


Over time I developed this rule where if a title or a proper name is followed by a common noun that represents the class of the entity I am referring to, then I use the definite article. In Example 1, the title of a publication in the first sentence is followed by the noun "whitepaper", thus the definite article in front of it. Is this a valid rule?


Examples:





  1. The "Advanced programming in Java" whitepaper was an excellent read.



    vs. "Advanced programming in Java" was an excellent read.





  2. The Microsoft Office 2010 product was released last year.



    vs. Microsoft Office 2010 was released last year.





Answer



Yes, it is. This is because the phrase "Advanced programming in Java" whitepaper forms a syntactic unit, with whitepaper as the head of the unit. The definite article for a phrase always corresponds to the head of the phrase, so using the definite (or indefinite) article for these phrases makes perfect sense and is correct English.


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