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An indefinite article is an article that marks an indefinite noun phrase. Indefinite articles are those such as English " a " or "an", which do not refer to a specific identifiable entity. Indefinites are commonly used to introduce a new discourse referent which can be referred back to in subsequent discussion:
The articles in English are the definite article the and the indefinite articles a and an.They are the two most common determiners.The definite article is the default determiner when the speaker believes that the listener knows the identity of a common noun's referent (because it is obvious, because it is common knowledge, or because it was mentioned in the same sentence or an earlier sentence).
Articles are words used (as a standalone word or a prefix or suffix) to specify the grammatical definiteness of a noun, and, in some languages, volume or numerical scope. Articles often include definite articles (such as English the) and indefinite articles (such as English a and an).
The definite or indefinite article is sometimes included in the official title of literary works as well as other kinds of fiction and non-fiction publications and works such as newspapers, films and visual artworks. In this case, the article should be included in the name of the corresponding Wikipedia article as well. For example,
It is the definite article in English. The is the most frequently used word in the English language; studies and analyses of texts have found it to account for seven percent of all printed English-language words. [1] It is derived from gendered articles in Old English which combined in Middle English and now has a single form used with nouns of ...
The most common of these are the definite and indefinite articles, the and a(n). Other determiners in English include the demonstratives this and that , and the quantifiers (e.g., all , many , and none ) as well as the numerals .
By the way, if you want other examples of people avoiding a natural disambiguation because it would include a definite article, I dug up a few here. All of these have the common name (with the definite article) redirecting to the article, but stick with parenthetical disambiguation in order to avoid using a "the".
The term zero article refers to the phenomenon wherein grammatically valid noun phrases contain no articles, either definite or indefinite.It is also used in reference to a theoretical zero-length article that can be said to be used in place of an expected article in some situations.