I guess I understand the basic rules of "A/an and the" in Cambridge Dictionary grammar tutorial.
However, I have no idea which rule in that tutorial fits the following situation.
A post use article "the" in this way
A research paper uses the term "proxy data sets" in this way
where "the term" refers to "proxy data sets" immediately after it. In this situation, should I use "a" or "the"?
Could someone please give a hint? Thanks in advance.
Best Answer
There is only one term "proxy data sets". There isn't another term that is also "proxy data sets" (like there is only one number 17. There aren't two different numbers among all the numbers we know that are both 17).
So when we talk about "proxy data sets", it's the term "proxy data sets". It's not (*)a term "proxy data sets" because if we're talking about "proxy data sets" as a term, there's no other term we could be talking about.
On the other hand, as I mentioned in comments, if we re-word the example a bit, we can end up using the indefinite article instead, as in
In this example, what's important is that the paper used a term that was new to me (it could be any term at all). But then we've added an aside, mentioning what term that was. But just because we mentioned the term in passing doesn't change the overall sense that what was important that I learned a new term when reading the paper, rather than what term it was in particular.