The article the is applied to nouns of either number: as, "The man, the men;" "The good boy, the good boys."
The is commonly required before adjectives that are used by ellipsis as nouns: as, "The young are slaves to novelty; the old, to custom."--Ld. Kames.
The article an or a implies unity, or one, and of course belongs to nouns of the singular number only; as, A man,--An old man,--A good boy.
An or a, like one, sometimes gives a collective meaning to an adjective of number, when the noun following is plural; as, A few days,--A hundred men,--One hundred pounds sterling.
Articles should be inserted as often as the sense requires them; as, "Repeat the preterit and [the] perfect participle of the verb to abide."--Error in Merchant's American School Grammar, p. 66.
Needless articles should be omitted; they seldom fail to pervert the sense: as, "The Rhine, the Danube, the Tanais, the Po, the Wolga, the Ganges, like many hundreds of similar names, rose not from any obscure jargon or irrational dialect."--Error in Dr. Murray's Hist. of Europ. Lang., Vol. i, p. 327.
The articles can seldom be put one for the other, without gross impropriety; and of course either is to be preferred to the other, as it better suits the sense: as, "The violation of this rule never fails to hurt and displease a reader."--Error in Blair's Lectures, p. 107. Say, "A violation of this rule never fails to displease the reader."
CLASSES.
The articles are distinguished as the definite and the indefinite.
I. The definite article is the, which denotes some particular thing or things; as, The boy, the oranges.
II. The indefinite article is an or a, which denotes one thing of a kind, but not any particular one; as, A boy, an orange.
MODIFICATIONS.[133]
The English articles have no modifications, except that an is shortened into a before the sound of a consonant; as, "In an epic poem, or a poem upon an elevated subject, a writer ought to avoid raising a simile on a low image."--Ld. Kames.
OBSERVATIONS.
OBS. 1.--No other words are so often employed as the articles. And, by reason of the various and very frequent occasions on which these definitives are required, no words are oftener misapplied; none, oftener omitted or inserted erroneously. I shall therefore copiously illustrate both their uses and their abuses; with the hope that every reader of this volume will think it worth his while to gain that knowledge which is requisite to the true use of these small but important words. Some parts of the explanation, however, must be deferred till we come to Syntax.
OBS. 2.--With the attempts of Tooke, Dalton, Webster, Cardell, Fowle, Wells,[134] Weld, Butler,
