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You will have noticed that nouns can be, and often are, preceded by a, an or the. These little words are called articles (or sometimes determiners). Articles are sometimes discussed as separate parts of speech and sometimes included among adjectives. As they only ever occur with nouns and noun phrases, or with words functioning as nouns, only a short comment is needed here.

A and an are called indefinite articles; a is used before a noun or noun phrase beginning with a consonant – a book, a ripe apple; while an is used before a noun or noun phrase beginning with a vowel – an apple, an exciting story. See Section 3.6 for the definition of vowel and consonant. Some people use an before words starting with the letter h (an hotel), but this is not modern English – it is pronunciation of words that English has borrowed from French, in the way French people would say them. As we speak and write English, we should treat all such words in the same way as English words. So the acceptable style is a hotel because the h is treated as a consonant.

The is the definite article and is used before any noun or noun phrase when we want to specify a particular thing or things: This is the book I want. One of the most hilarious stories is the first story in the book.