h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Think of this sentence:

"The bench sat on Thursday"

presumably it is talking about a group of judges (or whoever). It reads very poorly without the initial article (one wonders if Thursday is a cat and who on earth Bench is) but you definitely don't need one before Thursday.

I wonder what would happen if you had a cat named Cat?

John sat on Cat

John sat on cat

John sat on the cat

Here, capitalisation would make all (the) difference you need (except at sentence beginnings - but you don't need a capital to begin sentences, just rely on full stops!)

PT

"The bench sat on Thursday" or "Bench sat on Thursday". In my humbel opinion it reads just as well without than with the. Even with "the" it is possible to understand so that those damn lawyers sat on some poor creature called Thursday. But if that would be case, person talking would probably use more time to explain why group of people sat on something called Thursday. It is just question of how much one wants to misunderstand.

And what comes to John naming his cat Cat, well he doesn't seem to have too much imagination. But in any case I would presume from sentence:"John sat on C/cat" (you rarely hear if there is capital letter or not) that he sat on some poor cat, irrelevant what cat. If person telling me this storry would like to point out that it was his very own cat he/she would probably say:"John sat on his C/cat". And if it would be "the cat" he sat on earlier sentences would have probably made clear if it was his or somebody elses cat.

Real misunderstandings would be very rare even with completely artcile free English. In these cases small words like one/some/that/his/my/etc. would give much more information than just plane the, a or an.

So upgrade your English and free yourself from articles!