Quote Originally Posted by bitpicker View Post
Yeah, the mind boggles...
That's true. I mean, I'm not a grammarian kind of person, so remembering those rules and exceptions kind of does not work for me in a speech. So, sometimes I have to create my own intuitive rules which work sometimes and do not work in other cases. Like, I know I could relatively safely use "the" if I can substitute it with "my", "your", "our", or "their" and the sentence would still make sense. And I'm pretty sure this rule is incorrect, but it helps me using "the" at least somehow...