[Grammar] one-to-one versus one-to-many relationships

[hicksonster]

Is it grammatically correct to say "Passengers holding boarding passes may enter the restricted area" when trying to convey a one-to-one relationship (i.e. one boarding pass per person) or is it more appropriate to say "passengers holding a boarding pass may enter the restricted area"?

I've googled around and found that the former is the more common usage:
e.g.
"people with accounts can..."
"people with passwords can..."

But conversation-wise I would tend to go with the latter because it actually sounds better. Could you please explain the difference, thanks.

 

[Barb_D]

Hi, and welcome to Using English.

I see no practical difference between the two. Each person has one boarding pass. It only gets tricky when someone could have many of something, as in "The girls all brought their favorite dolls."

"A passenger with a boarding pass" is certainly not ambiguous, but "passengers with boarding passes" has no ambiguity when you mix in real-world knowledge.

 

[hicksonster]

Thanks for your post moderator.

But just to clarify, would you say that the previous two sentences are commonly accepted and correct in terms of Standard Written English?

And what about the following examples? Are they identical in meaning? I am getting more search results with the 1st (with a ticket) and the 4th (holding tickets) sentence, if that's any indication of anything.

(1) "people with a ticket"
(2) "people with tickets"
(3) "people holding a ticket"
(4) "people holding tickets"

Cheers,

 

[Barb_D]

All four are acceptable.