What's the correct phrase to use in the case below?
It happened the few days before the meteor shower.
It happened in the few days before the meteor shower.
Learn English – “in the few” or “the few”
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What's the correct phrase to use in the case below?
It happened the few days before the meteor shower.
It happened in the few days before the meteor shower.
Best Answer
The correct form of the sentence uses "in the few":
Imagine this as a response to the question "When did it happen?" The response is that it happened in (or during) the few days before the meteor showing. If you don't use in/during etc., you're not giving a time frame, so the sentence is incomplete. What this sentence says is that the event happened during any of the few days before the meteor shower.
Now if instead you modified the first sentence a bit and said:
This means something a little different; it means that the event happened at the exact point of a few days before the meteor shower. The event happened, a few days passed, then there was a meteor shower. This has a bit of a different meaning than the first sentence, because "in the few days before" means that it could have happened at any time during those few days; it could have been the day before or two days before or an hour before.
In the diagram below, the first sentence, "in the few days before", means that it could have happened at any time between the two marked spots ("|") on the timeline. If it happened "a few days before", it happened exactly at the first mark on the timeline.
-----------|----------------------------|----------------------
///A few days before/////The meteor shower//////