Pars pro Toto

English grammar questions, answered by Alan

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BerndSchnabl
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Pars pro Toto

Post by BerndSchnabl »

Hi
I hope someone can shed light on this issue of singular and plural:
I wrote this text:

"Tom runs a printing business.
He gets an order from his customer.
Sometimes he cannot fulfill the order for various reasons."

I have several questions:
1) Is it grammatically correct ?
2) Is the sentence "He gets an order from his costomer" a rhetorical figure called pars pro toto ?
because it implies that there is not only one order but instead there might be many ?
3) Does the word "sometimes" in the next sentence require that the previous sentence has to use "order" in plural ?

Your help is very much appreciated !
Kind Regards
Bernd
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Alan
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Re: Pars pro Toto

Post by Alan »

1. Yes.
2. Not a grammar issue, but I would say not.
3. No.
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