I've read an article and there's a sentence which confuses me:
No matter if your delivery takes place in a home or at the hospital…
If I rewrite it this way:
No matter if your delivery takes place at home or in the hospital …
is it still correct?
And if so, what's the difference between two of them?
Best Answer
"at home" means one's own home. If, for example, you were visiting your parents and gave birth in their home, you didn't give birth "at home" but rather "in a home."
And if you are debating now between "in a home" vs. "at a home" because of the circumstance in which you gave birth outside but still on the premises, just know that "at a home," while not ungrammatical, is very bizarre and unnatural phrasing. It's a construct someone not fluent in English would use. When we hear "at a home" we expect there to be more to the phrase: "at a home for the deaf," "at a home my mother was renting out." A commenter above, BoldBen, is spot-on when he points out: 'At a home' implies somewhere other than the patient's own home and suggests an institution of some kind, either a care home, residential home or, if there are any left, maternity home.
The phrasing of "in a home" is much, much more natural.