help with les articles

[Peter En]

Hi,

I recently received my submitted work back from my tutor and she underlined with a big red cross "chapitre trois" or "chapitre X". I need to refer to the chapters in the book as a reference for my arguments, so often I would say "selon chapitre x" or "comme l'a indiqué par chapitre x". Is there a problem with saying "chapitre X"? is there supposed to be an article or something before hand? How should I make reference to a chapter correctly in text, without the excessive use of parentheses? 

Furthermore, she underlined my use of "Chaque + noun" and wrote "article". I don't know if it was my handwriting or not, but as far as I'm concerned, there is no article when used with "chaque" because it's an indefinite determiner correct?

Same goes with the use of "plusieurs" I wanted to say "plusieurs + noun" not "plusieurs des +plural noun"... by which I mean that I wanted to say "several + nouns" not "several of the +noun" in which case I would be referring to something specific. Could someone clarify this with me?

merci d'avance

[Neil Coffey]

As a title, you would say "Chapitre X". However, your tutor is right to point out (which I assume is what she is doing) that when 'embedded' in a sentence, you would include the article: selon le chapitre X. This is a difference between French and English, where in English you would never say: "the chapitre 4", "the room 7" etc.

With chaque there would be no other article. So to say each book, it would simply be chaque livre. If you wanted to say each of the books, it would be chacun des livres, i.e. you actually use a slightly different word.

With plusieurs, it just depends on what you're trying to say:

plusieurs livres = several books

plusieurs des livres = several of the books

[Peter En]

thanks Neil!! this helped a lot.

[Chantal Savignat]

"comme l'a indiqué par chapitre x"

=> the right way for this is "comme il est indiqué dans le chapitre X"

for "chaque + noun" what is your sentence ? it's easier to correct with the sentence.