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Help the history professor review her student's thesis on technological paradigms! Select ALL the sentences that grammatically and naturally express a generic reference to an invention.
The correct answers are The printing press fundamentally altered the distribution of knowledge in Renaissance Europe. and Printing presses fundamentally altered the distribution of knowledge in Renaissance Europe.
In academic writing, when referring to an entire class of things (like an invention or a species) rather than specific instances, you have two main options:
- The definite article + singular countable noun (The printing press)
- The zero article + plural countable noun (Printing presses)
Using the indefinite article (a printing press) in this context incorrectly implies that one random, unspecified machine was responsible for the entire historical shift. Finally, singular countable nouns (printing press) cannot stand alone without a determiner.