What Is An Article? Types & Examples Published November 12, 2021 What Is An Article?

What Is An Article? Types & Examples
Published November 12, 2021

• 
  What Is An Article?
  

• 
  Types
  

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  Nouns That Don't Take Articles
  

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  Write With Grammar Coach
  

The man ate an extravagant meal at a fancy restaurant. Ritzy! This classy sentence uses three of some of the most commonly used words: the, a, and an. However, there is more to these words than simply the number of times that we use them. These three words belong to a class of words known as articles. If you want to become a grammar master, it is really important to know how to use articles because of how often they show up in our sentences.
What is an article?
An article is a word that is used to indicate that a noun is a noun without describing it. For example, in the sentence Nick bought a dog, the article a indicates that the word dog is a noun. Articles can also modify anything that acts as a noun, such as a pronoun or a noun phrase.
Often, a sentence needs an article before a noun in order to make grammatical sense. For example,
Incorrect: I have box.
Correct: I have a box.
Incorrect: She opened door.
Correct: She opened the door.
Incorrect: French is spoken by French.
Correct: French is spoken by the French.
Article examples
In English, there are only three articles. They are:

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  the
  
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  a
  
• 
  an
  

The following sentences show examples of how we use articles in sentences:

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  The zoo has an elephant enclosure.
  
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  I have a younger brother and an older sister.
  
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  The ancient Romans built the Coliseum.
  
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  Who lives in a pineapple under the sea?