📄️ Introduction
What are determiners?
📄️ Articles: introduction
What are articles?
📄️ Articles: basic information (A)
(This entry is for students who speak a language that has articles: e.g. French, German, Swedish, Norwegian, Spanish, Italian, Greek. If you speak a language without articles – for example Russian or Japanese – read entry (see here).)
📄️ Articles: basic information (B)
(This entry is for students who speak languages (e.g. Russian or Japanese) that do not have articles like English a/an and the. Students who speak languages which have articles (e.g. German or Portuguese) should read entry (see here).)
📄️ More about *the*
the = ‘you know which one(s)’
📄️ More about a/an
Countable and uncountable nouns
📄️ No article with plural and uncountable nouns
a/an not used
📄️ The difference between *some/any* and no article
Use with uncountable and plural nouns
📄️ Talking in general
the does not mean ‘all’
📄️ *the*: difficult cases
When we generalise about members of a group, meaning ‘any/every individual’, we usually use no article. For example, we use no article to generalise with uncountable and plural words (see here); but we use the to show that the listener/reader knows which people or things we are talking about (see here). Sometimes both these meanings come together, and it is difficult to know which form is correct. The grammatical distinctions in this area are not very clear; often the same idea can be expressed both with the and with no article. The following notes may help.
📄️ Special rules and exceptions
Common expressions without articles: in bed; at school
📄️ Possessive determiners: *my*, *your*, etc
What kind of words are they?
📄️ *this* and *that*
Determiners or pronouns
📄️ *this*/*that* and *it*: things that have just been mentioned
Referring back