[Grammar] Singular and Plural

[Ruaah]

While studying math, I found strange part;
Credit card companies use negative balances to represent when the credit card company owes the customer money, and positive balances to represent the customer owes the credit card company money.

Sneha has a balance of 0 dollars with his credit card company. what does a balance of 0 dollars represent?

At the beginning, the noun is plural: Credit card companies.
And then the singular nouns are used: the credit card company, the customer.

Aren't they wrong?

Thank you very much!

 

[canadian45]

While studying Math, I found something strange.
Credit card companies use negative balances to indicate when the credit card company owes the customer money, and positive balances to represent the customer owing the credit card company money.

Sneha has a balance of zero with his credit card company. what does a balance of zero represent? It means that neither party owes the other party any money.

At the beginning, the noun is plural: Credit card companies.
And then the singular nouns are used: the credit card company, the customer. Firstly, some customers only deal with one company. But even if they deal with several companies, it is talking about a customer's dealings with each individual company.

.

 

[Roman55]

I am not a teacher.

Why did you change math to Math? The only change I would have made is math to maths. ;-)

 

[canadian45]

I am not a teacher.

Why did you change math to Math? The only change I would have made is math to maths. ;-)

I treated it it as the name of a field of study, but perhaps that's going against convention.

 

[Barb_D]

"Credit card companies" refers to all credit card companies in general.
"the credit card company/the customer" refers to an individual relationship between any one customer and any one company.

It could be written with "a" credit card company and "a" customer with no difference in meaning (but it would be no more or less correct).