‘A’? ‘The’? Nothing?
Greetings again. I hope you’re doing well.
Recently a reader asked: “Can you clarify the rules for using the articles ‘a’ and ‘the’ in research papers?”
In this post, I’ll try to do so. Although using these articles correctly may seem intuitive to native English speakers, the full rules are fairly complex. Therefore I’ll present some basic points and then suggest some resources.
Use ‘a’ to refer for the first time to something that is one of multiple things in a category. Then use ‘the’ to refer again to that same thing. For example:
Yesterday I wrote a blog post. The blog post is about articles.
If a noun starts with a vowel sound, use ‘an’ instead of ‘a’. For example:
Last year I wrote an article. The article describes AuthorAID.
(Yes, it’s confusing that ‘article’ has more than one meaning. English is strange!)
When referring in a general way to an organ of the body, use ‘the’. For example, say, “The liver has many functions.” (‘Liver’ without ‘the’ means food made from an animal’s liver, as in “He likes to eat liver.”)
Here are some sources of more information on using articles:
- “Using Articles”
- “Scientific English” (See pages 28–31 of the PDF file.)
- “Articles and Connecting Words”
The internet has many other resources on this topic. Also, if you have difficulty with articles, I suggest looking at examples of how they are used in research papers in your field.
Do you have points or resources to add? Or do you have questions? If so, please post a comment or email me at bgastel@inasp.info.
Until the next post—
Barbara