CARROTTA
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🏫 Compendium
Grammar
EN
English — Articles with institutions and fixed phrases
With certain places, English drops the article when you mean the normal activity done there — go to bed, go to school — but uses the when you mean the physical building or a specific one.
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How it works
✓ Rule
Say go to bed, go to school, go to church, go to work and be in hospital with zero article when you mean the purpose (sleeping, studying, worshipping). Add the — the school, the hospital — when you mean the building or a particular one: I walked past the school; They rebuilt the hospital.
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Examples
| Phrase | Meaning / use |
|---|---|
| go to bed | to sleep — purpose, no article |
| go to school | to study (as a student) — purpose, no article |
| go to the school | to the building (e.g. as a visitor) — specific building, the |
| in hospital / in the hospital | in hospital = as a patient (BrE); in the hospital = at the building / AmE |
| have breakfast | meals take no article — breakfast, lunch, dinner |
| at home / by car | fixed phrases — no article after at home, by car, on foot |
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Good to know
⚠ Note
Don't add the by habit: at home is never at the home in this sense, and home even drops to after go — go home, not go to home. In American English in the hospital is normal even for a patient, unlike British in hospital.