Prepositions and Articles

Prepositions

A preposition is difficult to define but easy to recognize. The formal definition of a preposition is "a word or group of words that combines with a noun or pronoun to form a phrase that usually acts as an adverb, adjective, or noun."

A preposition is usually very small and very common. Words like at, of, on, to, and from are prepositions. But words like towards, around, following, during, and until are also prepositions, as are the phrases in front of, by means of, and according to. These combine with noun phrases to create what are known as prepositional phrases. See this list of prepositions, noting that there are some cases in which these words might be used as other parts of speech depending on how they're used in a sentence.

Examples:

We arrived at the school.

At is a preposition.

The school is a noun phrase.

At the school is a prepositional phrase.

According to experts, we should exercise daily.

According to is a preposition.

Experts is a noun (noun phrase).

According to experts is a prepositional phrase.

The cat walked towards the open door.

Towards is a preposition.

The open door is a noun phrase.

Towards the open door is a prepositional phrase.

An article has another definition that is more complicated than it needs to be. An article is defined as "a word that indicates that a noun is a noun without describing the noun." Huh? Let's simplify. In the English language, there are only three articles: a, an, and the. Easy peasy.

The is used when you want to direct someone to a specific noun.

Example:

The driver opened the door.

A and an are used to indicate a more generalized noun.

A is used before words that start with a consonant.

An is used before words that start with a vowel.

Example:

A driver opened a door.

An apple is an excellent snack.