Correct Use of Articles

The articles “a” or “an” and “the” are placed before a noun.
The article “a” or “an” is used in its original sense meaning “one.” If it means “one”, why can’t I just use the word “one”? Why bother using articles?

Consider the following sentences.
1. I have one apple with me.
2. One car was stolen from the parking lot last night.
3. One mother loves her child very much.

Does the first sentence sound good? Isn’t it a little awkward? Try rephrasing the sentence as “I have an apple with me” (“an” is used before a word beginning with a vowel sound; e.g., an inkpot, an onion, an MBA graduate.) Surely, the rephrased sentence sounds good.

Look at the second sentence. It is known for a fact that a parking lot has, more often than not, many cars. Of those many cars, one car (that is, some car) was stolen; this is what the sentence needs to convey. Note that we are not talking about any particular car, but about some car in a vague sense. Therefore, the sentence should read as “A car was stolen from the parking lot last night.”

You must have figured out what is wrong with the last sentence. In this sentence, the word “mother” is used to mean “any mother”, that is to say, “mother” is representative of the whole class of mothers. Therefore, the sentence should read as “A mother loves her child very much.”

See how the use of an article gives a whole new meaning to a sentence.
The article “the” is used to talk about a particular person or thing, or one already talked about. For example,
“The car you are looking for was stolen last night.” (Which car? The one you are looking for.)
“I saw the boys playing in the ground.” (Which boys? The ones already talked about. Which ground? The one in the neighbourhood/town.)
In conclusion, let me give you another example for the use of articles “a” or “an” and “the.”
“I was walking down the road when a biker drove past me. A few minutes later, I saw that the biker had been in an accident. The accident occurred when the biker tried to overtake a car.”