Grammar Girl here, I'm in Yon Fog, your friendly guide to the English language.

We talk about writing, history, rules, and other cool stuff.

Today's topics are when to use the word the before nouns,

and why it's so much easier to remember things that rhyme.

And just a quick note before we start, we are getting close to the new school year and I really, really want all you educators out there to know

about my free LinkedIn learning writing courses because I think they'll make your life

easier and help your students. Check out your county or university library to see if you can get them free, most of the time you can.

Once you're there, search for Grammar Girl, choose the course that pops up and then click on my name to see all seven courses.

Several listeners have written with questions on when to use the definite article the, the indefinite article A, or neither.

For example, Tracy W wrote, quote, which is correct?

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

Well, the use of articles is a tricky subject with many exceptions and idiosyncrasies.

We can't cover all 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. You have to say something like a cat the cat squiggles cat every cat or maybe

no cat a the possessive noun squigglies every No, 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 Catherine who's called a cat for short

then cat crossed the road works and this brings us to one kind of noun that

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