University abbrev. (and article usage with names)

[Peter McGraw]

As I recall, a well-known university in your home state is officially
named "THE Johns Hopkins University," and I'm a little less sure, but I
THINK Penn State's official name is "THE Pennsylvania State University."
Colloquial usage, of course, would tend to leave off the article
(unless local usage in those places has this same quirk), making these
actually examples of the opposite of the BYU usage you describe.

Peter Mc.

On Thu, 28 Oct 1999 09:13:07 -0600 David Bowie <db.list at PMPKN.NET>
wrote:


> And now for the oddity in article usage: When i first came here, one of
> the things i noticed was that several local speakers use the definite
> article when naming BYU, as in "So you want to drive to *the* Brigham
> Young University?" or "Here's how to get to *the* BYU". This seems odd
> to my Southern Maryland born-and-bred self--i can't put an article,
> definite or not, before the name of a school ending with "university"
> or "college" (as opposed to a school name beginning with those words,
> where i can freely include the definite article, and it would in fact
> usually be required). Has anyone anywhere noticed similar constructions
> with school names *ending* in those words?

----------------------
Peter A. McGraw
Linfield College
McMinnville, Oregon
pmcgraw at linfield.edu