Omitted articles after the preposition "without"? I searched on COCA(corpus of Contemporary American English) and found that when saying "reasonable explanation," people tend to add in the article "a", which thus makes the phrase become "a reasonable explanation." However, when saying "without reasonable explanation", there is usually no article seen. So, I'm wondering if there is a grammatical rule accounting for this omission. Any explanation?

How do these sentences sound to your native ears? We are trying to improve our command of English by translation exercises. One of us wrote such a sentence and I'm not sure whether it sounds natural: 1. For many people in Chinese world, “The Dream of The Red Chamber” is not only favorable but also seen as an outstanding masterpiece of Chinese literature－even it’s not the only outstanding masterpiece. First, does it sounds natural to use the word "favorable" to describe a literature work and its popularity? Second, how about changing "even" to "even though"? Do both of them sound okay? Does either of them make more sense? Besides, is there any problem with the two sentences below: 2.For many in the Chinese world, Dream of the Red Chamber is not just loved, but deemed as a masterpiece of Chinese literature, though not the only masterpiece. 3.For many Chinese people, Dream of the Red Chamber is not only adored by people, but also regarded as a masterpiece of Chinese literature－despite not being the only masterpiece. Thanks a lot.

Is there any natural or more concise way of saying the following sentences? Is there any natural or more concise way of saying the following sentences? I heard you use present continuous tense as in "one thing about number three is depending on who your grammar teacher is," from 3:37 to 4:46 of the video, and I'm wondering which situation it is for? And it is somehow related to a question that I've been having for so long: I heard a bunch of English native speakers seemingly use present continuous tense in daily conversations for none of the situations mentioned in the video, is it grammatical?

Response to Beware of Pity What would it happen if your true love, the meaning of your life, turns out to be a sophisticated lie? In Beware of Pity, Edith, the daughter of a landowner, was devastated and chose to take her own life. Given the social context in which the women of the age, physically sound or challenged, were more confined in the patriarchal society than they are today and had no chance to explore their own possibilities, this decision seems to be irrational yet the only one she could make in such great despair. However, I wonder whether her fate could change even if she had not found out the heart-broken truth? I don’t think so. Just imagine this: Hofmiller kept the secret until one day he met another woman he really loved, what would he do? To leave and live in the guilty of sending Edith to death or to stay and live in the lie? Even if Hofmiller chose to stay, could Edith endure the pressure and did not give in to romance competitions? In other words, the tragedy had been doomed and had no return since Hofmiller took his pity on her. Putting ourselves into Hofmiller’s shoes, we can also ask another question: what would it be if someone centers and burdens their life on ours? How should we turn them down with knowing that this would take their life? In Louis Cha's well-known kung-fu novel The Return of the Condor Heroes also presents the same question when the female protagonist Xiaolongnü wanted to leave her committed partner Yang Kang who could not live alone without Xiaolongnü so that she left the message to keep him awaiting in hope that Yang Kang could probably forget her. However, Louis Cha still tactfully avoided to directly confront the question by bringing Xiaolongnü back to her partner. This play also poses another long-lasting question: how much harm could goodness do? All the things Hofmiller did for Edith was out of pity which are often considered as a form of goodness. On the other hand, it was, ironically, the very pity that brought Edith’s life to an end.

Where does the name of "double wear" come from? I've recently picked up some new words about makeup things and there comes a word called double wear. I'm wondering why this kind of product is called double wear. Does it have anything to do with its function?