Using English articles (a, an, and the) correctly

Previously published as: Hart, G. 2019. Using English articles (a, an, and the) correctly. World Translation Services, Japan.

English uses a group of words called articles that clarify whether you are describing a specific thing or any member of a group of related things. Both appear before the name of a person, place, or thing (i.e., before a noun). Because articles are not used or are rarely used in Asian languages, they often create significant difficulties for writers who are learning English. In this article, I will describe the differences between the key types of article and how to use them correctly. Of course, since I am writing about English, you can expect to encounter exceptions and seemingly arbitrary or illogical examples. All you can do is memorize those exceptions to the rules.

The first group is called definite articles, and they refer to only one thing or person. They are called “definite” because they define which specific thing you are talking about. The three definite articles used in English are the, this, and that. We use them to say “the one we are talking about” (no other) or “only this one, not that one” (one but not the other). Definite articles are also used for extremes, such as “the fastest rate”, “the smallest leaf”, or “the most severe stress”. Because only one example can be fastest, smallest, or most severe, the article must be definite because you are defining a specific one.

 

The second group is called indefinite articles, and they refer to any member of a certain group. They are called “indefinite” because they do not define one specific thing. The indefinite articles in English are “a” and “an”. We use them to write “a tree” (any tree in the forest we are studying) or “an exception” (one of two or more possible exceptions). We use “an” before vowels (in English, the letters a, e, i, o, and u), but use “a” before consonants (any letter that is not pronounced as one of the five English vowels listed earlier in this sentence). There are some exceptions. The letter “y” sometimes functions as a vowel, as in the word “by”, but when it appears at the start of a word, it is always pronounced as a consonant. Some vowel combinations such as “eu” are also an exception, since they are pronounced as a consonant, not as a vowel: in the word European, the pronunciation of the first part of the word is “you-roh”, not “ee-oor-oh”, so we would write “a European”.

inally, in some dialects of English, such as British English, the letter “h” may not be pronounced at the start of a word, so the start of the word is pronounced as if it were a vowel, and we use “an” instead of “a”. For example, Americans would write “a habitat” (a hab-ee-tat), whereas British writers would write “an habitat” (an ah-bee-tat).

You can combine definite and indefinite articles to move from a general statement to a more specific statement. For example: “We studied a site [a site whose name we will specify later] on the Loess Plateau [only that specific plateau] that had experienced severe soil erosion. The site [only our specific site, not other sites] we studied was located...” You can also combine the two types of article to move from a specific statement to a general statement: “The Hox family of genes [only this family] controls development. A gene in the Hox family [any gene in the family] may be found only in certain species.”

 

The third category is called partitive articles, because they refer to part of some group. These include words such as “some” and “all”. For example, we might write “some of the individuals in treatment A, but all of the individuals in treatment B”. The only particular caution here is that some is imprecise, and should generally be replaced with more specific wording, such as “50% of the individuals”, “only 5 of the 50 individuals”, or “individuals A, B, F, G, and M”. All is clear, because it always means 100% of the individuals (i.e., the whole group).

Some exceptions are sufficiently common that they are worth mentioning:

• Indefinite articles are not used with words that do not have a plural form. We would not write an equipment or a research in English because equipments and researches do not exist as plural nouns in English. Instead, we would write “a piece of equipment” or “a device”, and “a study” or “a research project”.

• It is not necessary to use an article when you are speaking about something in general terms. For example, “I studied Forestry in university”. I could then be more specific: “The Forestry faculty was small.”

• It is not necessary to use an article in front of a name of a person, place, or thing that is not being used as an adjective. For example, “I am learning Japanese”. But compare “I am learning the Japanese language”, where Japanese is being used as an adjective.

• It is necessary to use an article when a proper noun (the name of a person, place, or thing) is being used as an adjective. For example, “the Yangtze River”.

• If you can replace the subject of a sentence with "all [subject] everywhere", no article is required. For example, "Trees [all trees everywhere] photosynthesize."

• It is not necessary to use an article for something that is not counted and not specific. For example, “growth decreases when water is not available.”

• It is necessary to use an article before a plural country name in which the first word functions as an adjective. For example, compare “the United States is concerned about” with “Japan is concerned about”.

There are exceptions to these guidelines, and sometimes the best solution is to look at how other authors have used articles in their English papers published in good journals and follow their example. This is generally a safe approach because the published paper has been reviewed by one or more peer reviewers to ensure that the meaning is clear and by the journal’s copyediting staff to ensure that the grammar is correct.