When it comes to losing weight, a quick fix to would be nice, but we
know there’s no such [a] thing.
(Aussie 7 News)
It sounds like there isn’t ‘a’ in the news. So I wonder if it be right when there is no ‘a’ after ‘such.’ Would it be okay?
Articles – Can ‘A’ Be Omitted Between ‘Such’ and a Noun?
articlescomparative-constructions
Best Answer
This is easy to stumble over because the construction without a negative, such a thing, is anomalous.
Any word you might substitute for such—a word which plays the same syntactic role, such as similar or like or different or other—follows the article: a similar thing, a like thing, a different thing, another thing. And historically, in fact, a such thing alternated freely with such a thing before the language decided it preferred the such a construction about 1400.
Once you realize that the underlying sense is a such, the proper negative becomes clear: no replaces a as the determiner, and reverts to its normal position: no similar thing, no like thing, no different thing, no other thing—and no such thing.
But your instinct is shared by many native speakers. The construction such a thing is so firmly fixed on people's tongues that you will frequently hear people say no such a thing. And at least in my own native dialect the struggle to make syntactic sense of the construction results in no such of a thing.