Question

Fill in the blank with the most appropriate word-
__________ shortest man in ________ world and __________ tallest man in _________ world live in __________ Africa.
a) The/the/the/the/no article
b) The/the/no article/an/an
c) No article/the/no article/an/an
d) The/a/no article/no article/an
e) The/no article/no article/no article/no article

Answer 1

Hint: An article is any member of a class of dedicated words that are used with noun phrases to mark the identifiably of the referents of the noun phrases. In English, both “the” and “a” are articles, which combine with a noun to form a noun phrase.

Complete answer:
 There are two types of articles:
DEFINITE ARTICLE (THE): Article ‘the’ is used to refer to a DEFINITE thing or person.
INDEFINITE ARTICLE(A/AN): Article ‘a/an’ is used to refer to a thing or person in general. For instance: man, door, etc.
Article ‘a’ is used with consonant sounds whereas the article ‘an’ is used with vowel sounds.
In the first blank, the article “the” will be used because of the article ‘the’ is used with superlatives (shortest) .
In the second blank, the article “the” will be used because ‘world’ is a proper noun. There is only one ‘world.’
In the third blank, the article “the” will be used because “tallest” is superlative, and the article ‘the’ is used with superlatives.
In the fourth blank, no article or ‘zero article’ will be used because ‘Africa’ is a country and no article is used before a country name.
Hence, the option ‘a’ is the correct option. The complete sentence would be – The shortest man in the world and the tallest man in the world live in Africa.

Note:
There is one more kind of article, which is a Proper Article. A proper article indicates that its noun is proper, and refers to a unique entity. It may be the name of a person, the name of a place, the name of a planet, etc.