Welcome back to our series on articles. Today, we continue exploring these sometimes seemingly insignificant, yet incredibly useful and genuinely fascinating little functional words. Be sure to check out our first post on the rules governing their usage, along with the follow-up exercise post. Then dive deeper with this new article. That way, you’ll be fully prepared for this material, which builds on the concepts covered earlier.

Few, a Few, Little & a Little

Articles (a/an, the) precede nouns and some other words, such as few and little in a noun phrase. Let’s see when exactly we’d say a few/little and when we’d use the zero article.

Few	A few	Little	A little
Used with: countable nouns	Used with: countable nouns	Used with: uncountable nouns	Used with: uncountable nouns
Meaning: almost none	Meaning: a small number, but enough	Meaning: almost none	Meaning: a small amount, but enough
Tone: negative 😢	Tone: positive 😊	Tone: negative 😢	Tone: positive 😊
Example: I have few friends. (= I don’t have many friends; I’d like to have more.)	Example: I have a few good friends. I think you can call me lucky.	Example: There is little hope. (= There is almost no hope left.)	Example: There is a little hope that she will feel better, even at this stage of the disease.

All, Both, Half

The article is usually the first word in a noun phrase (e.g. a few good friends), but we put the article after all, both and half:

All	Both	Half
All + the + noun (before plural or uncountable nouns): all the people, all the sugar	Both + the + noun (when referring to 2 specific things): both the books, both the students ❗Both + noun is ✅ too.	Half + a (before a singular noun): half a day, half a bottle, half an hour
All + noun (generic meaning: all people (in general)	Both + of (before pronouns or definite nouns): both of my parents, both of the books, both of us	Half + the (before a plural or uncountable noun): half the students (half students), half the water
All + of (before a pronoun or determiner): all of the students (specific ones), all of your time (❗all your time is also correct), all of them	❗Never used with singular nouns: both book, both the book	➕ Half + of (before pronouns or definite nouns): half of the cake, half of my friends, half of them

❗Note that all + a/an is also possible. It means “entire, complete:” all a blur, all an illusion, all a mess, all a mystery, all a lie, all a mistake, all a dream, all an act, all a coincidence.

A vs. One

It was mentioned in the previous post that “a” expresses “one” in number or quantity. But although “a” is similar in meaning to “one,” it’s no identical:

• There’s a room available at the Marriot on Friday night. (= at least one room, and maybe more than one. The exact number isn’t important.)
• There’s one room available at the Marriot on Friday night. (= There is only one room available.)

“The” in Academic English

The definite article is very common in academic English, particularly with a prepositional phrase that identifies the noun. For example:

• Motorized boats harm the ecology of waterways, unless their use is kept at a low level.
• The impact of technology on learning outcomes has been widely documented.

As mentioned in the previous post, we use “the” with a singular noun to generalize about a whole group of species in more formal contexts. For example:

• The African elephant has larger ears than the Indian elephant.

Articles & Musical Instruments

We hope we have been able to give you a comprehensive guide on article usage. Remember, a post with practical exercises will follow this one, so stay tuned and practice using articles in a variety of situations (covering the rules from this post and the first one in the series) next week. Of course, if we missed anything or if you have questions, drop us a line in the comments below!