Articles

What Are Articles?

Articles are words that define a noun as specific or unspecific. Consider the following examples:

After the long day, the cup of tea tasted particularly good.

By using the article the, we’ve shown that it was one specific day that was long and one specific cup of tea that tasted good.

After a long day, a cup of tea tastes particularly good.

By using the article a, we’ve created a general statement, implying that any cup of tea would taste good after any long day.

English has two types of articles: definite and indefinite. Let’s discuss them now in more detail.

The Definite Article

The definite article is the word the. It limits the meaning of a noun to one particular thing. For example, your friend might ask, “Are you going to the party this weekend?” The definite article tells you that your friend is referring to a specific party that both of you know about. The definite article can be used with singular, plural, or uncountable nouns. Below are some examples of the definite article the used in context:

Please give me the hammer.

Please give me the red hammer; the blue one is too small.

Please give me the nail.

Please give me the large nail; it’s the only one strong enough to hold this painting.

Please give me the hammer and the nail.

The Indefinite Article

The indefinite article takes two forms. It’s the word a when it precedes a word that begins with a consonant. It’s the word an when it precedes a word that begins with a vowel. The indefinite article indicates that a noun refers to a general idea rather than a particular thing. For example, you might ask your friend, “Should I bring a gift to the party?” Your friend will understand that you are not asking about a specific type of gift or a specific item. “I am going to bring an apple pie,” your friend tells you. Again, the indefinite article indicates that she is not talking about a specific apple pie. Your friend probably doesn’t even have any pie yet. The indefinite article only appears with singular nouns. Consider the following examples of indefinite articles used in context:

Please hand me a book; any book will do.

Please hand me an autobiography; any autobiography will do.

Exceptions: Choosing A or An

There are a few exceptions to the general rule of using a before words that start with consonants and an before words that begin with vowels. The first letter of the word honor, for example, is a consonant, but it’s unpronounced. In spite of its spelling, the word honor begins with a vowel sound. Therefore, we use an. Consider the example sentence below for an illustration of this concept.

My mother is a honest woman.

My mother is an honest woman.

Similarly, when the first letter of a word is a vowel but is pronounced with a consonant sound, use a, as in the sample sentence below:

She is an United States senator.

She is a United States senator.

This holds true with acronyms and initialisms, too: an LCD display, a UK-based company, an HR department, a URL.

Article Before an Adjective

Sometimes an article modifies a noun that is also modified by an adjective. The usual word order is article + adjective + noun. If the article is indefinite, choose a or an based on the word that immediately follows it. Consider the following examples for reference:

Eliza will bring a small gift to Sophie’s party.

I heard an interesting story yesterday.

Indefinite Articles with Uncountable Nouns

Uncountable nouns are nouns that are either difficult or impossible to count. Uncountable nouns include intangible things (e.g., information, air), liquids (e.g., milk, wine), and things that are too large or numerous to count (e.g., equipment, sand, wood). Because these things can’t be counted, you should never use a or an with them—remember, the indefinite article is only for singular nouns. Uncountable nouns can be modified by words like some, however. Consider the examples below for reference:

Please give me a water.

Water is an uncountable noun and should not be used with the indefinite article.

Please give me some water.

However, if you describe the water in terms of countable units (like bottles), you can use the indefinite article.

Please give me a bottle of water.

Please give me an ice.

Please give me an ice cube.

Please give me some ice.

Note that depending on the context, some nouns can be countable or uncountable (e.g., hair, noise, time):

We need a light in this room.

We need some light in this room.

Using Articles with Pronouns

Possessive pronouns can help identify whether you’re talking about specific or nonspecific items. As we’ve seen, articles also indicate specificity. But if you use both a possessive pronoun and an article at the same time, readers will become confused. Possessive pronouns are words like his, my, our, its, her, and their. Articles should not be used with pronouns. Consider the examples below.

Why are you reading the my book?

The and my should not be used together since they are both meant to modify the same noun. Instead, you should use one or the other, depending on the intended meaning:

Why are you reading the book?

Why are you reading my book?

Omission of Articles

Occasionally, articles are omitted altogether before certain nouns. In these cases, the article is implied but not actually present. This implied article is sometimes called a “zero article.” Often, the article is omitted before nouns that refer to abstract ideas. Look at the following examples:

Let’s go out for a dinner tonight.

Let’s go out for dinner tonight.

The creativity is a valuable quality in children.

Creativity is a valuable quality in children.

Many languages and nationalities are not preceded by an article. Consider the example below:

I studied the French in high school for four years.

I studied French in high school for four years.

Sports and academic subjects do not require articles. See the sentences below for reference:

I like to play the baseball.

I like to play baseball.

My sister was always good at the math.

My sister was always good at math.

The Best Ways to Set Goals and (Actually) Get Results From Them

A few years ago, I had to come to terms with my burgeoning habit of browsing housing rental ads on Craigslist for places in the Pacific Northwest. I’d look at the listings and wonder, What would it be like to live in Washington? Wondering soon turned to obsession, and obsession spurred research. Before I knew it, I’d made a decision—I was going to leave my ancestral home in the upper Midwest and trek two thousand miles to live near the shores of Puget Sound.

I’d set a goal: “Head west, young (*cough*) woman! Head west!”

I’m at my desk now writing this article from what I consider to be the happiest place on earth. The natural surroundings, the people, and the culture called me here and I have an overwhelming sense that I’ve found where I was meant to be. But I couldn’t have done it without setting goals.

It turns out that I accidentally did goal-setting right. I chose one overarching intention, set a concrete goal, which I focused on from a positive angle, and then broke it down into achievable steps. Although I didn’t look into goal-setting techniques before I determined that I was moving west no matter what it took, I got lucky—psychology backs up my methods. Here’s how I made it happen.

Begin by setting your intention.

What do you want? Start with the big picture. For me, moving west was part of a more abstract desire: “Find your place in the world.” Your overarching motivation might be to get healthier, or to be less solitary. Your intention isn’t the same as your goal; it’s the why behind it.

Take time for deep reflection. What do you truly want to accomplish or see change in your life? We have a tendency toward wishful thinking, but it’s effort, not daydreaming, that makes our wishes into reality. Setting an intention is the first step toward actualizing your desires.

Set a concrete goal.

Now it’s time to set your primary goal, the Big Thing you want to achieve that will bring you closer to your intentions. There are just a few simple rules.

• Aim to be actual. Think of this process as taking a big abstract goal and making it more concrete. For me, this step meant taking “find your place in the world” a step further with “move to the Pacific Northwest.” For you, “get healthier” might begin with “be more active.” Make sure your goal is something you can actually do. You may want to become a rich, famous novelist, but that’s dependent on a lot of outside factors, from agents to editors to fickle markets. It’s okay to be ambitious, but keep your goal within the realm of possibility. “Finish writing a novel” would be a better place to start.
• Frame your goal in a positive way. When I decided to move west, I thought of it as beginning a new life adventure rather than getting the hell out of my small Midwestern town. Positive motivation is the key, whereas negativity and avoidance-based goal-setting doesn’t seem to work as well. So, choose goals like “eat healthier” over “lose weight.”
• Write down your goal, and then write a little bit about it every day as you imagine what your life might be like if everything progressed perfectly. Do this for several days in a row. Research shows this technique works!
• Make sure it’s about you. The only person you can control is yourself, which is why a goal like “get people to like me” doesn’t work while “be more sociable” does.

Break your goal down into actionable steps . . . backwards.

I wanted to move west. I knew that much. Now, I had to figure out how to make it happen. That involved assessing my huge goal, figuring out all the smaller steps I’d need to take to get results, and prioritizing them. Trying to suss out how to get from A to Z can feel overwhelming. That’s why it’s sometimes easier to work backwards. My move west is a good example of that process in action.

I imagined the very last thing I would need to accomplish right before achieving my goal—“move into my new place.” What would have to happen right before that? Hmm. I’d have to drive cross-country. And before that? Pack my moving truck. And prior to packing my moving truck, I’d have to pack my stuff into boxes.

But before I could pack a moving truck, I’d have to actually rent one. The flow of your action plan won’t always be linear, and you’ll realize that certain steps (packing a truck) are sub-tasks of another (rent a truck). That’s okay. The idea of working backwards is simply to get things rolling along. Pondering your steps from the top down can feel overwhelming, but working backwards breaks that spell. Think of it more as a brainstorming session. You’ll organize everything later.

Keep the process fluid. Part of achieving your goals is being able to adjust your action plan as you go along. For instance, I originally planned to secure a moving truck, and I even went so far as to rent one. But then I decided that I didn’t have furniture valuable enough to warrant me paying nearly $3,000 to move it across the United States. I revised my plan, organized a huge moving sale, donated what I couldn’t sell, and packed my most important treasures into my minivan.

Goals are meant to help you shape yourself into the person you want to be. It’s all you, baby! Just remember that nothing, not even your goal itself, is written in stone. It’s completely up to you to decide where you want to be in life and how you’ll get there. You’re the master of your fate.

Make Friday Your Most Productive Day

Is Friday a super productive work day? Or are you starting to wonder why you bother coming in at all? For many of us, getting through the day on Friday (especially the afternoon) can be a real struggle.

Who doesn’t get that #FridayFeeling?

Leaving the Office on a Friday GIF from Scrubs GIFs

After a long week of getting stuff done, we’re just ready for the weekend to begin. Staying focused on work can feel impossible, but indulging in a lighter work day can be guilt-inducing when we expect (or others expect) that we’ll get more work done than we actually do.

What if you could truly enjoy your Friday and still have a productive work day where you’re proud of what you accomplished?

Inconceivable? Think again. Here are four simple strategies you can use to make your Fridays more productive and fun.

1 Schedule Your Day Strategically

Has this ever happened to you on a Friday afternoon?You glance at the clock, it’s 4:30, and you still haven’t crossed the most important To Do item off your list.

via GIPHY

Friday is prime time for procrastination, so do what you can to resist this trap. If you’re planning on dipping out early, the last thing you want holding you back are some serious To Do items—or being stuck in a meeting at 4:00 pm.

Instead of drifting into work late, come in early or on time. Schedule your important projects and meetings for the morning when you’re feeling more focused and energetic. Then save the grueling afternoon for tasks that aren’t as important.

When you’re strategic and intentional about your schedule, you can get your most important work done before that Friday Feeling rolls around in the afternoon.

Productive Friday accomplished? Check!

2 Do the Small Stuff You’ve Been Putting Off

If you’re like me, Friday afternoon is the worst time for tasks that require critical thinking. Good thing productivity isn’t just about the big stuff!

Instead of whiling away the hours on Slack or falling down the Internet rabbit hole, why not channel your restless energy for good?

via GIPHY

Friday afternoon is the perfect time to check off those pesky little To Dos and get things prepped for next week.

Go ahead and answer the last emails in your inbox. Fill out that report you’ve been putting off. Do the online training you forgot about. Touch base with Patty in marketing about that thing. If your desk looks like a garbage heap, do some tidying up so your workspace feels fresh and organized.

Start thinking about next week. Prep yourself on the project deadlines and meetings you have coming up. Get clear on your top priorities for Monday so you can roll into work ahead of the game.

You’ll feel super productive and better able to enjoy your weekend when you have everything wrapped up and ready to go for next week!

3 Set Realistic Expectations

via GIPHY

Clear strategies for a more productive Friday are helpful, but you still need to be realistic about how much you can really do. Between the extra distractions (beer hour, anyone?) and lower mental energy, you might be working at a more relaxed pace.

Maybe you have five projects you’d like to cross off your Friday list, but it’s more realistic that you’ll get only three done before you run out of steam.

Setting realistic expectations will help you enjoy what you’re able to accomplish and not beat yourself up over the things you didn’t get done.

4 Give Yourself Permission to Have Fun

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Letting yourself relax a little on a Friday may feel like an easy choice . . . or it may leave you worried that you’re slacking off and should be getting more done.

The reality is this: when you’re tired and distracted, forcing yourself to make sluggish progress or staying late to eke out a little more on a project is not as productive as you think. You’re not doing your best work.

A better option is to accept when you need to take a break. Give yourself permission to relax. It’s okay to leave a little early to unwind with friends or go to a fitness class, take a walk, catch some alone time at a cafe over lunch.

Maybe there’s a coworker you want to connect with or a creative project you love but don’t normally have time for.

After a long week of kicking ass and taking names, sometimes the best thing you can do for your work and for yourself is to take a step back so you can recharge.

Remember, it’s okay if you don’t disrupt the markets, solve world hunger, or write the next Great American Novel. That stuff will be waiting on Monday, but right now it’s Friday—so take a break!

What are your favorite productivity hacks for getting through Fridays? Come share with us in the comments section below!

5 Retro Games that Made Us Better People

You’re having an average morning at the office, when suddenly word ripples out from the corner suite: the boss is going to visit a major potential client this afternoon, and she wants the latest version of the demo ready to show off. A wave of adrenaline sweeps the room—this is all hands on deck.

The copywriter and designers launch into vetting every scrap of text and making sure every element on the screen will be pixel-perfect. Their actions come naturally; there is no fumbling, no time to second-guess. Meanwhile the developers and project manager scramble furiously to make sure every last tweak is going to fit—if something in the code breaks now, there might not be enough time to push through a fix. An exhilarating (if unexpected) test of your team’s abilities is now underway.

A lesser version of yourself might hyperventilate in this situation, but you’re so immersed in the task at hand you hardly have time to reflect on this. If you came up for air now, you might even realize you’re thrilled—it’s as though you’ve been preparing for this kind of challenge your whole life.

In a way, maybe you have been. Do you think all those old games you grew up playing had anything to do with it?

Perhaps you have fond memories of looking over a parent’s shoulder while they played solitaire, instilling an early appreciation for sequencing and spotting patterns. Or maybe anytime you think about strategic ways to keep your project’s options open, it all comes back to those kitchen-table games of poker with your cousins.

Did you surmount your first failure to negotiate a grand bargain after a botched transaction involving Park Place and a get-out-of-jail-free card? Did you learn about admitting you need help from the time you had to wake up that one kid at the slumber party who knew how to wall-jump in Super Metroid?

Maybe you took down enough bosses in Zelda with just a single a heart remaining that you’ll forever know how to keep your cool in dicy situations. Or maybe all those late nights playing Contra at your friend’s house taught you the value of leaving a few power-ups for your teammate to grab.

Whatever your games of choice were back then, we think it all might’ve factored in over the years to help shape the collaborator you’ve since become. Here’s a look at some of the games that taught us a thing or two about teamwork in the days before gamers wore headsets.

1 Chrono Trigger

This Super Nintendo classic centers on a plucky band of six (or seven—we’ll get to that) friends who represent different epochs of human progress, all united around their modest shared goal of averting an apocalypse.

Besides their disparate strengths, the characters all showcase unique styles of communication: The cursed frog (birthname: Glenn) speaks at times like a character from Chaucer, while cavegirl Ayla’s diction is still more . . . primitive. Spikey-haired swordsman Crono hardly speaks at all throughout the game.

But despite their many dissimilarities, the team does its best work together, with three-character ensembles uniting to cast spells that combine their best traits—for instance blending Crono’s lightning magic with the fire of Lucca (the prodigious inventor) and water magic from Marle (the crossbow-toting princess).

Along the way, the time-traveling team has opportunities to help right each other’s wrongs—stopping a horrible accident from befalling Lucca’s mother, for instance, or helping Glenn lay to rest the ghost of a slain knight. In a true testament to the game’s collaborative spirit, you can even forgive and recruit Magus, the shadow wizard who earlier in the game had seemed the middle ages’ main fount of evil.

Chrono Trigger remains a beautiful gamerly encapsulation of the power of working with a team, however wonky or arcane your colleagues and their strengths may seem.

2 Starcraft

The ne plus ultra of real-time strategy, Starcraft is a game where no one unit can single-handedly win a match, but the most skilled players make certain that every humble drone they spawn or probe they assemble counts for something.

As with Chrono Trigger (albeit here on a galactic scale) the single-player campaigns in Starcraft often center on peculiar alliances of disparate forces: the scrappy human space explorers (Terrans, to use the game’s parlance) teaming with the noble but sometimes conceited Protoss aliens, for instance, to halt the advance of the prolific, bug-like Zerg.

Connecting online or via local-area networks (remember LAN parties?) also made for fun hours battling alongside friends. Such endeavors found you delegating some tasks (mine your own minerals and explore the map as you can) while intersecting on shared goals (let’s position some siege tanks and templars over the cliff above the opponent’s expansion). And in the true spirit of teamwork, a team with human medics could even heal an ally’s alien hydralisks!

For anyone whose job involves managing a complex and growing team in an uncertain and rapidly evolving environment, Starcraft might just feel familiar.

3 Rummikub

You might remember this tile-based classic from summer nights with your grandparents; it fits somewhere between gin rummy and Scrabble in the taxonomy of games.

As a pastime where you not only build numeric patterns of your own but also break apart and reassemble combinations played by others, your every incremental step toward victory in Rummikub might also provide the breakthrough someone else needs in order to win. In other words, to inch toward success, you can’t help but nudge others closer to winning, as well—how’s that for built-in collaboration?

As an occasional bonus, trying to combo your way to victory through a dramatic (if not convoluted) series of moves in a crowded late-game board occasionally just fizzles and goes awry. The solution? Other players have to help you puzzle the board back to its original state.

4 The Adventures of Lolo

The NES Lolo series proved unique in an era of games like Mario and Tetris that tend to reward sharp reflexes and hand-eye coordination.

Lolo’s gameplay revolves around recognizing patterns and devising the best sequence for the adorable blue protagonist (the third installment also features his pink counterpart, Lala) to navigate obstacles like rivers and mazes, as well as a slew of quirky enemies. As a result, quick thumbs proved a secondary asset in Lolo, next to patience and a willingness to experiment.

Consequently, a few people could easily sit around the screen, passing the controller and plotting different solutions to each level (as your humble blogger did with his mom and brother in the bygone era of brick-and-mortar video stores).

There are many doors into the thriving world of collaborative puzzle games (consider tabletop gems like Forbidden Island) but for a certain set of people whose work all hinges on planning things in the right order, the sound of a Lolo-esque treasure chest springing open will forever play in their minds as they close in on their final task each day.

5 Magic: The Gathering

As digital games grow ever more popular, paper Magic might just endure (the strategy trading-card game is nearly twenty-five years old now) partly because it can provide something of a respite for people whose careers involve looking at screens all day.

As a recruiter for a tech company in San Francisco, Kevin Ligutom weeds through massive stacks of resumes just to pluck out a small handful of winning candidates. Along the way, he sifts through a variety of metrics and has to know which numbers matter and which ones are just noise. In the end, he has to communicate these results to hiring managers, lawyers, and H.R.

While Kevin is often at the hub of a wheel with many spokes, one thing that helps is his longtime hobby: slinging cards in Legacy, Magic’s highly competitive equivalent of Formula One racing. Experienced Legacy players know hundreds of cards purely by memory, and are comfortable sifting through reams of data about everything from popular tournament-winning decks to lethal new uses for long-out-of-print cards.

In other words, Kevin says, his hobby is a lot like his job: “I need to be able to tell management how long it will take to fill a given role. Part of that is giving them both metrics and my analysis of those numbers based on my experience. Magic got me really comfortable with that kind of thinking.”

Whatever your assignment might be today, we hope you have fun—and maybe even make a game out of it.

7 Ghoulish Grammar Gaffes That Will Give You Chills

If you’re too old to be frightened by scary costumes, and you’ve watched so many horror movies that nothing can give you the chills anymore, you might think you’re preparing for a thrill-free Halloween. But we beg to differ. Creepier than the most realistic Halloween costumes, darker than the most terrifying horror movies, there are grammar mistakes—ghoulish and gnarly and gloomy and many other adjectives starting with the letter g. So be careful not to make one of these seven on All Hallows’ Eve. Who knows what might happen if you do?

1 The Ghastly Apostrophe This serious grammar gaffe lurks in Halloween’s other name—All Hallows’ Eve. It contains an apostrophe you shouldn’t dare to forget or misplace. Place it after the s in “hallows” because it’s a plural. You would write “hallow’s” if there were only one hallow to which the eve belongs.

2 The Serial Comma Nothing good can come out of anything serial on Halloween. The serial comma is optional in most cases, but leaving it out can sometimes change the meaning of your sentence. If you say you’re celebrating Halloween with two ghosts, grandma and grandpa, you’ll be saying that your grandparents came back to haunt you. By adding the serial comma and saying that you’re celebrating Halloween with two ghosts, grandma, and grandpa, you’ll be saying that you and your grandparents are having a Halloween party with a couple of ghosts. And that sounds like a much better situation, doesn’t it?

3 Creeped Out Yet? If something creeps you out, you can later say that it creeped you out. But if something creeps up on you on Halloween, can you say that it creeped up on you? You can’t, because the past participle of the verb creep is crept. The only time this irregular verb becomes regular is in the phrasal verb creep out.

4 Dismembered Sentences There’s an old rule that says every sentence has to have a subject and a verb. If you’ve got those two things, you can do whatever you want with the rest of the sentence. But if you dismember your sentence by chopping off a subordinate clause and turning it into a new sentence, you might be making a mistake. Not that it’s always bad to dismember a sentence and use some of its fragments. It’s not. It can be very effective, as long as you don’t overdo it.

5 The Vague Pronoun Reference Too many “thats” and “thoses” at the beginning of sentences can create a thick layer of fog over a text. If Halloween movies have taught us anything, it’s that bad things happen when it’s foggy. Writing becomes difficult to understand when readers have to backtrack and figure out what all those pronouns are referring to. Your text will be less clear, and clarity is the difference between walking toward the strange noise to see what’s making it and running for your life as soon as you hear it.

6 Comma Splices OK, using commas to splice sentences doesn’t make you a mad scientist who splices the DNA of a scorpion with the DNA of a hamster, but you are creating something that doesn’t look quite right. And unlike the mad scientist, you have plenty of other tools at your disposal to create something new that actually makes sense—from dashes to semicolons to conjunctions.

7 The Disappearing Comma You could have sworn you put commas around that non-restrictive element, but now they’re not there and your sentence sounds weird. Looks like you’ve been visited by the disappearing comma, a rare phenomenon that happens when we’re sure we use our commas properly but in reality we don’t. Commas should always follow an introductory element and should always set off a non-restrictive element. It’s also a good idea to throw a comma after the next-to-last item in a list (that’s the serial comma right there). As soon as you learn these rules, the disappearing comma will stop bothering you.

Catalog vs. Catalogue

• Catalogue and catalog are both acceptable spellings.
• Catalog is most popular in American English.
• Catalogue is the most common form in other parts of the world.

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Some stores compile lists of products you can buy from them. These lists (often in book form) are sometimes accompanied by descriptions and photos of the products. You may see this book described as either a catalog or a catalogue. Which is the proper way to spell the word—catalog or catalogue?

Catalog or Catalogue—Which Is Correct?

Which spelling do you think looks best? Your answer might depend on where you live. In the United States, catalog is the most common way to spell the word. In other English-speaking countries, catalogue is most popular.

Years ago, American writers began to drop the -ue ending from many words to simplify the spelling. Now, words like analog, dialog, and catalog are common in American English.

Examples

One of the best ways to learn how to use a word is to look at examples. Here are some ways to use catalog (and catalogue) in a sentence. You will notice that the definition of catalog extends beyond a book of products for sale. A catalog can be any compilation of items organized in a systematic manner. That’s why the list of books available at your library might be organized in a digital catalog. It can also be used as a verb meaning to make a catalog of items or to add an item to a catalog. You can catalog anything!

The McKinney Public Library System on Monday upgraded to a new online catalog system known as Koha, an open-source Integrated Library System (ILS) used by thousands of libraries worldwide.

McKinney Courier-Gazette

As the 2016 ABC Best Books for Young Readers catalog arrives in stores, booksellers can supplement their supplies with extra stock by placing an order via a form on BookWeb.

Bookweb.org

“This is the most democratic Neiman Marcus catalogue I’ve ever seen,” Pedraza said, citing a $35 tube of Dior lipstick. “They know they need to appeal to millennials if they’re going to survive two decades from now.”

Washington Post

Cataloguing is not simple data entry, and understanding how to catalogue within a MARC record is not as simple identifying the field and inputting straightforward data and punctuation.

The Cataloguing Librarian

There are so many ways to catalog the possible flaws: He’s too short. She’s too tall. Too fat. Too thin. Not enough education. Too much education. Or you become judgmental about how much your date eats or drinks or how they interact with other people.

TinyBuddha.com

Even though catalog usually appears without the -ue ending in American English, there’s nothing wrong with writing it the longer way. In fact, if you are writing for an audience outside the United States, catalogue may be the form that they are most comfortable seeing in print. Which is the proper way to spell the word—catalog or catalogue? They are both acceptable options. Now, you have the information to decide which spelling will work best for you.