Question

Choose the correct articles to fill in the blanks:


________ U.S.A. is larger than _______ India in area.


a) The, the
b) The, no article required
c) No article required; no article required
d) An, a

Answer 1

Hint: There are two articles in English: ‘the’ and ‘a/an’. ‘The’ is the definite article and ‘a/an’ are the indefinite articles.

Complete answer:

The article ‘the' is used before specific or particular nouns.
It is also used before the plural forms of names of the countries or states.
For example, 'The United Arab Emirates.'

'U.S.A' is an abbreviation for ‘United States of America’. The country is made up of 50 states, and thus the name is plural. Hence, we use 'The' before 'U.S.A.'

'India' is a proper noun, a country whose name is in the singular form. We don’t use articles before proper nouns; hence no article is to be used before 'India'.

Let us thus analyze the options given to us:

Option (a.), ‘the, the’, is incorrect as we cannot use ‘the’ before India.
Option (b.), ‘The, no article required’, is correct.
Option (c.), ‘No article required; no article required’, is incorrect as we have to put ‘the’ before ‘U.S.A’ since it is a proper plural noun.
Option (d.), ‘An, a’ is incorrect because U.S.A and India are proper nouns and cannot have an indefinite article before them.

Note: You should always remember that plural proper nouns have always have to have ‘the’ before them. This will help you to solve more questions like this.