Question

Fill in the blank with a suitable article from the options given:
“What _______ wonderful day!” said the tourist.
a)the
b)a
c)an
d)No article

Answer 1

Hint: Articles are used before nouns to specify something. It also tells whether the noun is a singular noun or a plural noun.

Complete step-by-step answer:

The article ‘a’ is used before words whose first letter is a consonant. ‘An’ is used when the word starts with a vowel. Vowels are a, e, i, o, u.
The given sentence is talking about a single day. The word ‘wonderful’ starts with ‘w’ which is a consonant. Therefore, the article to be used is ‘a’. Thus, the correct option is b. The complete sentence is ‘“What a wonderful day!” said the tourist.’
Option a is wrong because ‘the’ is used for proper nouns or when we want to specify something. ‘The girl’ means we are talking about a particular girl. Similarly, ‘the apple’, ‘the man’, ‘the dress’, means we are talking about a particular apple, man and dress respectively.
Option c is wrong because ‘wonderful’ does not start with a vowel. ‘An’ can be used before words like apple, egg, orange, ice cream, etc., that is, words which start with a vowel.
Option d is just to confuse the students. It is not the correct answer.

Note: Some words may begin with a vowel but still use ‘a’ before them. For example, ‘university’. We say ‘a university’, not ‘an university’ even though it starts with the vowel ‘u’. This is because the word ‘university’ does not start with a vowel sound. These are certain exceptions that have to be learned about. For most of the words, the basic rule of vowel and consonant follows.