“Grammar” means the study of how words and their component parts combine to form sentences, grammar is the system of a language. People sometimes describe grammar as the “rules” of a language; but in fact no language has rules*. If we use the word “rules”, we suggest that somebody created the rules first and then spoke the language, like a new game. But languages did not start like that. Languages started by people making sounds which evolved into words, phrases and sentences. No commonly-spoken language is fixed. All languages change over time. What we call “grammar” is simply a reflection of a language at a particular time.

Grammar is the structural foundation of our ability to express ourselves. The more we are aware of how it works, the more we can monitor the meaning and effectiveness of the way we and others use language. It can help foster precision, detect ambiguity, and exploit the richness of expression available in English. Two different kinds of grammar are used.Descriptive grammar (definition #1) refers to the structure of a language as it is actually used by speakers and writers. Prescriptive grammar (definition #2) refers to the structure of a language as certain people think it should be used.

Grammar is one of the most essential things you should know when you learn to write proper English. It deals with the forms and structures of words and sentences. You should know the proper usage of such words. The best way to learn English grammar is not by using the dictionary but by using English grammar books.  Good writers not only rely on themselves, when it comes to write good copy, abstracts, documents, letters or even books. They rely on supportive tools, like advanced (NLP)  Natural language processing grammar checkers.

 Use of  “the” in English Grammar:

Articles in English are invariable. That is, they do not change according to the gender or number of the noun they refer to, e.g. the boy, the woman, the children

‘The’ is used:

1. to refer to something which has already been mentioned.

Example: An elephant and a mouse fell in love.

The mouse loved the elephant’s long trunk,

and the elephant loved the mouse’s tiny nose.

2. when both the speaker and listener know what is being talked about, even if it has not been mentioned before.

Example: ‘Where’s the bathroom?’

‘It’s on the first floor.’

3. in sentences or clauses where we define or identify a particular person or object:

Examples: The man who wrote this book is famous.

‘Which car did you scratch?’ ‘The red one.

My house is the one with a blue door.’

4. to refer to objects we regard as unique:

Examples: the sun, the moon, the world

5. before superlatives and ordinal numbers: (see Adjectives)

Examples: the highest building, the first page, the last chapter.

6. with adjectives, to refer to a whole group of people:

Examples: the Japanese (see Nouns – Nationalities), the old

7. with names of geographical areas and oceans:

Examples: the Caribbean, the Sahara, the Atlantic

8. with decades, or groups of years:

Example: she grew up in the seventies

We do not use the with:

Television:

• I watch television a lot.
• what’s on television tonight?

•  but   can you turn off the television? (=the TV set)

We do not use the with:

Places ( continents, countries, states, islands, towns etc.)

• France is a very large country. (not the France)
• Cairo is the capital of Egypt.
• Peru is in  South America.

But we use the in names with republic/ states/ kingdom:

THE      the Republic of Ireland ( or the Irish Republic)

the United States of America (the USA)      the United Kingdom (the UK)