Question

Fill in the blank with a suitable article
Our trip to Shimla was _______ exciting experience.
a) the
b) a
c) an
d) No article

Answer 1

Hint: When using articles, the rule is to use “a” before words which start with a consonant, “an” before words which start with a vowel, and “the” before a word which is either a proper noun or something very specific.

Complete answer:
As can be seen in the question, the article has to be placed before a word which has a vowel as its first letter- “e” in “exciting”. Thus, we need to put “an” before it. Therefore, the correct option is option c.
Option a is wrong because “the” is used for proper nouns to point to something specific.
The sun is very bright today. Sun is a proper noun so “the” is always used before it.
I came across a beautiful lake during my hiking trip. The lake had tiny fishes in it. Here “the” is used before “lake” to specify that I am talking about any lake but that lake in particular.
Option b is wrong because “a” is used before words which starts with a consonant. “Exciting” starts with the letter e which is a vowel.
Option d is wrong because we already have our correct answer (option c). Also, articles are always important so it’s unlikely that there will be no article.

Note:
Some words, despite starting with a vowel, have “a” before it. One such example is “university”. We write “a university” and not “an university”. That is because the pronunciation of university is not a vowel pronunciation. These exceptions can be looked up in grammar books and websites.