: Re: Overusing "the" and "I" I'm not a native English speaker, and I find that my English writing contains too many definite article "the" when writing scientific reports, and too many "I" when writing

@Shakeerah107

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I am not sure I understand. Could you please specify what you mean by "the" used ahead of pronouns/conjunctions/prepositions ? As far as I can readily think of, "the" is only used in situations that match : the [adjective] "noun", [adjective] being optional. In some situations, an adverb can take the place of the adjective, in which case the noun itself is usually silent : "the deeply guilty" implies "the deeply guilty people", making "deeply guilty" the adjective.

I agree with you entirely that you might use "the" 5 times in a sentence without breaking any grammatical rule, or the natural sound of the sentence. But then, even a single instance can be avoidable : "we sell the tools for fishing" sounds better to me as "we sell tools for fishing", unless one is implying an even more specialized subset within "tools for fishing".

I came across a situation where using "the" actually reduces emphasis. Taking Expedia as a group that contains many sister concerns :

Expedia website -> expedia.com;
The Expedia website -> expedia.com, or website of any sister concern

But such usage is mostly a matter of personal inclination. For general usage, I think the best way is to simply test for elementary grammatical rules, and then check : does it sound okay without "the" in front ? If yes, drop it.

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