The articles "a," "an," and "the" are difficult for many non-native speakers of English to learn to use properly. However, native speakers of English seldom use articles incorrectly; therefore, any errors in article usage are quite noticeable and distracting to them.

While rules for common nouns are subtle and require years of experience with the language to understand and apply these rules infallibly, the following will assist you in choosing between a definite article (the) and an indefinite article (a or an) or using no article at all with common nouns.

1. determine if the noun is definite; if it is, use the.

2. if the noun is indefinite, determine the countaility and use the following table (or flow chart) to determine the appropriate article:

Thus, if the noun is indefinite, the appropriate article depends on countability; countable nouns use a or an, and uncountable nouns use no article at all.

Guidelines for choosing between a and an and selecting the appropriate article to use with a proper noun are available through the links above.

These pages were developed from material prepared by
John R. Kohl
The Writing Center
4508 Sage Laboratory
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
276-8983

REFERENCES

Brown, Roger. A First Language: The Early Stages. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1973. (Folsom library P136 .B7)

Celce-Murcia, Marianne, and Larsen-Freeman, Diane. The Grammar Book: An ESL/EFL Teacher's Course. Rowley, MA: Newbury House, 1983. 171-202.

Hacker, Diana. The Bedford Handbook for Writers. Boston: St. Martin's, 1991. 312-17. (Available at the Writing Center)

Hornby, A.S. The Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary of Current English. 3rd ed. London: Oxford U P, 1974. (Available at the Writing Center)

Master, Peter A. "Teaching the English Article to Foreign Technical Writing Students." The Technical Writing Teacher 13.3 (1986): 203-10. (Folsom library reserve 808 .T49)

Quirk, Randolph, Sidney Greenbaum, Geoffrey Leech, and Jan Svartvik. A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language. New York: Longman, 1985. (Folsom library PE1106 .C65 1985)