Grimmer Girl here, today Neil Whitman will help us figure out when to use an article before

a noun.

Also at the end of the show I'll have a correction to last week's episode, so be sure

to listen through.

Several listeners have written in with questions on when to use the definite article the, the

indefinite article A, or neither.

For example, Tracy W. wrote, which is correct.

Thank you for taking the time to review my application, or thank you for taking the time

to review my application.

The use of articles is a tricky subject with many exceptions and idiosyncrasies.

We can't cover all of the cases today, but we can look at the basic rules and see how

they apply to Tracy's question.

We'll start with some facts about nouns.

First, some nouns in English can't stand alone.

For example, you can't just say cat crossed the road.

You have to say something like a cat, the cat, squiggly's cat, every cat, or maybe no cat.

The words A, the, every, no, and the possessive nouns squiggly's are all examples of what

linguists call determiners, and in English some nouns have to have determiners.

So exactly which nouns need them.

Well, countable singular nouns such as cat must have a determiner.

Of course, if you're writing about a cat named cat, or someone named Catherine who's

called cat for short, then cat crossed the road works fine.

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