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There are examples for the article.

  1. In the beginning, There is a light.
  2. At night, I used to sleep late.

Why is the article used sentence 1(in the beginning)? Why isn't the article used sentence 2 (at night)? Is there any rule for the article I don't know? Please, tell me.

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    It's hard to say why an article was used in (1) without more context. Also, (2) is a duplicate of this question.
    – Laurel ♦
    Commented Mar 15, 2018 at 3:16
  • I agree with Laurel. Without more context, your first sentence could even be taken as unidiomatic since we don't often find "In the beginning" coupled with the present tense. We just can't say without knowing more. Maybe At first would be the preferred idiomatic phrase. And your second sentence doesn't really make sense. When we "sleep late" we usually sleep well into the morning, not "at night". Perhaps you wanted to say "go to bed" instead of "sleep".
    – TimR
    Commented Mar 15, 2018 at 11:03

1 Answer 1

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  1. In the beginning, there is a light.

Here, you're talking about a specific point in time at which something begins, hence the definite article. It's hard to imagine a context where 'beginning' doesn't refer to a specific point but a point in general, hence "in/at the beginning" but rarely "at/in beginning".

  1. At night, I used to sleep late.

Here, you're not talking about a specific night. If you want to talk about a specific night, you can use 'in the night' instead, which means 'during the night'.

In the night, I heard some noise downstairs.

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