This morning my HR colleague emailed me to fix some typo errors in our company website. Not a big deal, since the detail of the changes are included in the email.

As I make the corrections, I noticed some sentences which I wasn’t comfortable:

1. RichLand now employs more than 900 staff throughout the Asia Pacific region
2. RichLand Logistics is a leading logistics solutions provider serving clients across the Asia Pacific region

I felt that the usage of article “the” before Asia Pacific is rather weird. I thought if I remove the article the, it will sounds better. So I decided to go ahead with the removal. I then emailed her back informing that the changes is live, and told her about the extra changes. After clicking the Send button, I become slightly worried. What if my removal of article the was wrong. Thus, I googled it.

Taken from the first search result:

The definite article is used before singular and plural nouns when the noun is specific or particular. The signals that the noun is definite, that it refers to a particular member of a group. For example:

“The dog that bit me ran away.” Here, we’re talking about a specific dog, the dog that bit me.

“I was happy to see the policeman who saved my cat!” Here, we’re talking about a particular policeman. Even if we don’t know the policeman’s name, it’s still a particular policeman because it is the one who saved the cat.

“I saw the elephant at the zoo.” Here, we’re talking about a specific noun. Probably there is only one elephant at the zoo.

After finished reading the linked page above, I am no longer worried. It turns out my hunch was right, we shouldn’t use article the before the name of a region/continents. So, yay for me? 😀