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I have a simple question. I wondered what article I should use to refer to a noun in general. Which one is the right form?

  • The story of the inventor of a car.
  • The story of the inventor of the car.

And I'm not sure other usages of definite articles in the sentences above were right, either. Thanks in advance

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marked as duplicate by Andrew, Jason Bassford, choster, Eddie Kal, Hellion Nov 20 '18 at 18:13

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The indefinite article ("a" or "an") refers to one instance of a larger class. The definite article refers to the class as represented by a single instance.

So Preston Tucker invented an automobile, the Tucker Torpedo.

Gottlieb Daimler invented the automobile; that is, he came up with the idea of automobiles in general (by developing the internal-combustion engine).

(Incidentally, he invented the motorcycle first!)

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    This kind of question has been asked dozens of times on ELL. It's better to point them to previous explanations than to write yet another version of the same information. – Andrew Nov 19 '18 at 16:23
  • @Andrew I see your point. sorry for asking mostly duplicate question. – bombs Nov 21 '18 at 0:25
  • @Malvolio Thank you so much for the answer. I'm still curios about one more thing. "The story of the inventor of the car." <- is it a right form? and can I only use one "the" and omit the rest of the definite articles, like this? "The story of inventor of car" – bombs Nov 21 '18 at 0:25
  • Never omit an article from a singular, countable noun. In fact, when a native speaker wants to imitate the speech of a non-Westerner, the two clichéd errors are dropping articles and forgetting plurals. Your profile, @bombs, suggests you are East Asian: the equivalent would be leaving out the count word in Korean, Japanese, or Chinese. It would just sound weird and wrong. – Malvolio Nov 21 '18 at 15:26

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