Two Good Questions: Articles and Communication

One of my international readers sent an example today with two good questions. She wanted to know when to use the DEFINITE article THE in describing a company and when to use the INDEFINITE article A or AN. Here is a similar example:

ABC Communications, the/a global communications company, is based in Singapore.

As this reader pointed out in her question, ABC Global Communications is NOT the only global communications company in the world, so the article choice should be A. The sentence should read as follows:

ABC Communications, a global communications company, is based in Singapore.

This reader also asked about the difference between COMMUNICATIONS and COMMUNICATION and wondered which would be the best choice for a sentence like this.

COMMUNICATIONS is a relatively new term that refers to the whole business of media and its related technology. COMMUNICATION is a generic term that expresses the concept of conveying ideas from one person to another. In this sentence, the appropriate choice is COMMUNICATIONS.

By the way, for another good point about use of articles, please check my blog entry for February 26. It talks about correct article use for parallel structure.