[thelist] What Are Stop Words?

[Jono Young]

 From Search Engine Watch:
http://searchenginewatch.com/facts/article.php/2156061

[quote]
Consider this sentence:
The way to the school is long and hard when walking in the rain.

The appears three times. To save space, a search engine might replace 
it with what's called a marker. The sentence would be stored like this:

* way to * school is long and hard when walking in * rain.

This explanation is simplified, but the point is that using markers can 
save a lot of disk space. The sentence retains most of its relevancy, 
and the extra space can be used to store more web pages.
[/quote]

"... the point is that using markers..."
The article does not explain where these "markers" should be used.
Does the above mean that when writing Meta Tags, Alt tags, etc., that 
if you do need to use a number of articles, such as "the" that it is 
better to leave them out and replace then with a marker, such as *?  If 
so, is "*" the appropriate marker to use?