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Can you give some examples for context? – Kosmonaut Aug 26 '10 at 11:12
Maybe Hamid is asking about the difference between "in future" and "in the future"? – delete Aug 26 '10 at 13:08
@Shinto Yes, exactly, that. Sorry for the mistake. – Mysterion Aug 26 '10 at 13:49
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Can you give sentences? If the sentence is "Be careful in future", then I would tell you that the sentence was just a note (or written by a non-native speaker) and should normally have "the" in front of it. If the sentence is "I hope to see you again in future meetings", then I would tell you that "future" is being used as an adjective. Or, maybe there is some context where "in future" would be used that I am not thinking of. – Kosmonaut Aug 26 '10 at 14:02
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In future just sounds like bad grammar. – Incognito Aug 26 '10 at 15:38
I agree with user680. I clicked on Shinto's google search and most of the results seem to be found on web forums where people are too lazy to add "the" between "in" and "future". Also, I would not expect a native English speaker to actually say "…in future" as opposed to "…in the future". – wdypdx22 Aug 26 '10 at 16:29
Well, I’ll be damned. “In future” seems plainly ungrammatical to my native speaker intuition, but I went and looked in COCA and there are tons of examples. – nohat♦ Aug 26 '10 at 16:57
@nohat, @user680: I always assumed the "in future" was simple laziness that assumed a place in the language over time. – Goodbye Stack Exchange Aug 26 '10 at 18:22
We don't even know what we are answering without examples. – Kosmonaut Aug 26 '10 at 18:31
Where Americans would use the phrase "In the future", Britons would almost always use "In future". In future, I would hope to hear fewer questions of this sort. – davarinofuntucson Jun 18 '16 at 0:36"