A Handy Little Writing Tip: Be Wary of "The"

Practically anyone with editing experience will tell you that one particular noun signal is misused quite often. Of course I am talking about this word: "The".

"A", "an", and "the" are noun signals which have varying degrees of specificity. So often, I see a writer use "the" when he or she should have used "a". Here's an example.

Jack picked up the pencil.

Standing alone, "a" could replace "the" in this sentence, and it might be more accurate. Context, however, may dictate otherwise. If Jack's pencil was mentioned earlier, the example might be correct. This leads to another misuse of our noun signal.

Susan filed the fingernail.

While grammatically correct, the sentence might be more accurate if we replace "the" with "her". Don't use a noun signal if you can use a possessive pronoun instead. As before, context should guide the decision.

Sometimes our nasty little noun signal is used unnecessarily. Look at this example:

The fireworks filled the sky.

We don't need that first instance of "the".

So, if you write, take some of your work and do a search for occurrences of "the". About 30% of the time, you can eliminate the word or change it to something more accurate.