How to learn where to put the/(-) in English quickly? I

http://www.thepunctuationguide.com/hyphen.html

It's not used very widely IMO.

>>17739520
The short answer is between syllables. Look in dictionary for where the syllable break is. Some word processing programs can be set to automatically hyphenate for you, though they are far from 100% accurate.

>>17739526
I didn't mean hyphen with (-), I meant where to put the and where not

with (-) I mean no article before a word

>>17739537
I have no idea what you mean now. Give an example.

>>17739539
In my books, when there is an exercise to put the or nothing before a word, they write "Put the/(-) in the exercise", so for example if there is school as a building you write the school and when there's school as an institution you write (-) school

>>17739546
Ah, I think I understand you now. It's the difference between "Apples are nice" and "The apples are in the bag".

And the difference is whether you are talking about a specific example or the general idea of the thing.

"School is necessary" is not talking about any specific school but just the idea of education.

"The school is on Main Street" is talking about a specific building.

"Girls are weird" is a general statement about the sex as a whole
"The girls in my class are weird" is about specific persons.

Get it?

>>17739560
Thanks, but there are also many other places where you put the and where you don't, not only if you're talking about specific things

>>17739632
Actually there aren't many exceptions to that general rule. And those that exist are more a matter of local dialect. Americans say that someone having an operation is "in the hospital" while Brits say he is "in hospital" but that's the only oddity I can think of.

>>17739546
I am British and have never heard of an exercise like this. I'll bet it was invented by someone whos first language is not english.

Unless it's to help you to realise you're speaking American English...