Articles, Prepositions and Conjunctions
Clear rules and high-frequency traps for Articles, Prepositions and Conjunctions. Essential for error spotting and cloze tests in SSC, Banking, UPSC, EPFO and DRDO exams.
Table of Contents
Articles: A, An and The
Articles are determiners that specify whether a noun is general or specific. “A” and “an” are indefinite articles. “The” is the definite article. Competitive exams test sound-based choice of “a/an” and the correct use or omission of “the”.
No article is used before plural or uncountable nouns when speaking generally. Water is essential. Books are useful. However, “the” is required when the reference is specific. The water in this bottle is clean.
Certain expressions omit the article: go to school, by bus, at night, in the morning (but at night). These fixed phrases appear frequently in cloze tests.
Prepositions: Common Rules and Traps
Prepositions show the relationship between a noun or pronoun and other words in the sentence. Errors usually involve wrong preposition choice or unnecessary prepositions after certain verbs and adjectives.
Time prepositions: “at” for exact times, “on” for days and dates, “in” for months, years and longer periods. She will arrive at 5 pm on Monday in July.
Place prepositions: “at” for a point, “on” for a surface, “in” for an enclosed space. The book is on the table. He is in the room.
These fixed combinations are high-yield for error spotting and sentence improvement. Learning the most common pairs saves time during the exam.
Conjunctions: Coordinating and Correlative
Conjunctions join words, phrases or clauses. Coordinating conjunctions (and, but, or, nor, for, yet, so) connect equal elements. Correlative conjunctions work in pairs and require parallel structure.
Parallelism is required with correlative conjunctions. He likes both reading and writing (not both reading and to write).
“Although / though / even though” is followed by a clause, not by “but”. Although he was tired, he continued working (not although…but).
These pairs appear regularly in sentence improvement and error detection questions. Practising the correct pairs and the required verb agreement removes most traps.
Practice Questions
Choose the correct option. Click “Show Answer” for the explanation.