Question

Fill in the blanks with the most appropriate words:
If _______ guest has to leave ________ table during ________ meal he always asks his hostess, ‘Will you please excuse me for _____ minute?’
A) a/the/a/a
B) no article/the/a/no article
C) the/the/no article/the
D) an/the/a/a
E) no article/no article/no article/a

Answer 1

Hint: We are asked to find the appropriate words – articles - that fill in each of the blanks. We use an article to specify the noun’s grammatical usages.

Complete answer : Articles are words that we use before a noun to demonstrate its actual grammatical usage. The articles in English grammar are – a, an, the. The usage of these articles defines a noun specific or unspecific.
Article the is called the definite article as we use it to describe a specific or particular thing, while a and an are the indefinite articles.

>In the given sentence, ‘guest’ is unspecific and hence a would be appropriate article there. We use ‘the table’ to refer to the table that particular guest would be using. Similarly, ‘meal’ and ‘minute’ can be unspecific, and hence we use a.
Thus, the set of articles in option a becomes the right answer.
>Option b is wrong because we cannot leave ‘guest’ and ‘minute’ stand-alone without an article. It would make the sentence meaningless and incoherent.
>Option c can be ruled out as ‘the’ minute cannot be an appropriate usage.
>Similarly, option d is also incorrect as an can never precede ‘guest’ which is not a vowel sound.
>In option e, we are not provided any articles other than for ‘a minute.’ As it is incomplete, we rule out this option too

Hence the correct answer is option ‘a’.

Note:One must be sure in applying a/an as the article for singular nouns. Do not use a/an without a noun following it. Also, an should be always used with a vowel sound.