Question

Fill in the blank with a suitable article:
________________ life is strange sometimes. You never know what is going to happen next.
a) A
b) An
c) The
d) No article

Answer 1

Hint: An article is like an adjective and like adjectives, articles modify the noun. Here, we have an abstract noun, i.e. ‘life’.

Complete answer:
Basically, an article is an adjective. Like adjectives, articles modify nouns. English has two articles: the (definite article) and a/ an (indefinite article).
Here, the noun is ‘life’ and the type of noun related to ‘life’ is – abstract noun. Now, abstract nouns are words that name things that are not concrete or refer to a general concept or idea. We cannot detect an abstract noun with our five physical senses, i.e. – you can't see it, smell it, taste it, hear it, or touch it. In essence, an abstract noun is a quality, a concept, an idea, or maybe even an event.
Now, the use of articles with countable abstract nouns does not differ from their use with countable concrete nouns. Uncountable abstract nouns usually don't follow any article.
And since we have an abstract noun ‘life’ in the above-given sentence, therefore we will not use any article’. This makes option (d), i.e. no article the correct solution and makes the sentence as – “Life is strange sometimes. You never know what is going to happen next’.
Since we are using option (d) this renders the other option incorrect.

Note:
 Countable abstract nouns in singular form are used with the indefinite or definite article, and in the plural form, they are used without any article or with the definite article. And in the case of the uncountable abstract noun, we do not use an article.