In response to last month's newsletter, we received some excellent feedback on the rules for Articles. We discussed using articles for rivers, but not lakes and for plural or multiple names. Susan Matson had a different perspective and said, "It seems to me that the problem is not really about the type of body of water (Iake vs. river). It's about whether the defining  geographic term is modified by a preceding adjective or not. For example, for lakes, we begin with the word "Lake"  and don't throw an adjective into it;  "Lake Como,"   "Lake Michigan," but we don't say "River Colorado." We say "The Colorado River,"  "The Ganges River."  We sense that "Colorado" and "Ganges" are modifiers. We use "the" with modifiers. Similarly, "The Rocky Mountains;"  Rocky is the adjective, mountains is a geographic term, but  with "Mount Evans" and "Mount Kilimanjaro," there are no adjectives preceding." 

 

Thanks, Susan, for your input.  We believe you should use whichever rule makes sense and is memorable to your student /client.