Articles and other noun markers

Articles (a, an, the) are part of a category of words known as noun markers or determiners. Standard English uses noun markers to help identify the nouns that follow. In addition to articles, noun markers include

• possessive nouns, such as Elena’s
• possessive pronoun/adjectives: my, your, his, her, its, our, their
• demonstrative pronoun/adjectives: this, that, these, those
• quantifiers: all, any, each, either, every, few, many, more, most, much, neither, several, some, and so on
• numbers: one, two, and so on

Articles and other noun markers always appear before nouns. Sometimes other modifiers, such as adjectives, come between a noun marker and a noun.

In most cases, do not use an article with another noun marker, such as this.

EXCEPTION:Some expressions consist of an article and another noun marker: a few, the most, all the.

Exercise: Using articles 1

Exercise: Using articles 2

Exercise: Using articles 3

Exercise: Articles and types of nouns

Related topics:

Possessive nouns

Possessive pronoun/adjectives

Demonstrative pronoun/adjectives

Quantifiers