8 Bonus Part of Speech: Articles

There’s one last group of words we should discuss, called articles. They have a status kind of like the planet/non-planet Pluto: some people include articles in the list of parts of speech, and some people don’t.

Regardless, I think it’s a good idea to know about articles so you don’t get confused trying to fit them into one of the other categories.

There are three articles — a, an, and the — and their job is to tell readers whether a noun is specific or general/unspecific. We use the to mark nouns as specific, and a/an to mark them as unspecific.

I want to buy a house before I retire.

In this sentence, the article a tells readers that I’m expressing a wish to buy any house, not a specific one.

An oyster tastes better when it’s fresh.

I use an instead of a here because the next word starts with a vowel sound.

I want to buy the house next door.

In this instance, the article the indicates that I want to buy a specific house (the one next door).