Originally Posted By: PastorVon
At least I did not write "the 'hoi polloi'".


Which was exactly my problem. You should have written "the 'hoi polloi'". If you were using hoi polloi in Greek, the hoi means 'the' and should have been declined according to the correct omicron declension. Otherwise, as a phrase we have stolen from a foreign language, hoi doesn't mean 'the' and the phrase falls under the syntax rules of the English language, which requre use of the in this context.