Scribal abbreviation by "contraction" and was mostly a Christian usage for sacred words, Nomina Sacra; non-Christian sigla usage usually limited the number of letters the abbreviation comprised and omitted no intermediate letter. One practice was rendering an overused, formulaic phrase only as a siglum: DM for "Dis Manibus" ("Dedicated to the Manes"); IHS from the first three letters of "ΙΗΣΟΥΣ"; and RIP for "requiescat in pace" ("Rest in Peace") because the long-form written usage of the abbreviated phrase, by itself, was rare. According to Trabe, these abbreviations are not really meant to lighten the burden of the scribe but rather to shroud
English articles cases a noun, or more generally a noun phrase, must be "completed" with a determiner to clarify what the referent of the noun phrase is. The most common determiners are the articles "the" and "a(n)", which specify the presence or absence of definiteness of the noun. Other possible determiners include words like "this", "my", "each" and "many" – see English determiners. There are also cases where no determiner is required, as in the sentence "John likes fast cars". The definite article "the" is used when the referent of the noun phrase is assumed to be unique or known from the