Writing Tips Guides Resources

When You Catch an Adjective, Kill It: The Parts of Speech, for Better And/Or Worse What do you get when you mix nine parts of speech, one great writer, and generous dashes of insight, humor, and irreverence? One phenomenally entertaining language book. In his waggish yet authoritative book, Ben Yagoda has managed to undo the dark work of legions of English teachers and libraries of dusty grammar texts. Not since School House Rock have adjectives, adverbs, articles, conjunctions, interjections, nouns, prepositions, pronouns, and verbs been explored with such infectious ... [Find out more ...]

Articles, determiners and quantifiers are sometimes referred to as the ninth part of speech. These are small words that will precede and modify nouns in a sentence. Different functions are served by articles, determiners and quantifiers. One purpose of these words is to show whether something specific is referred. Another purpose is to determine the quantity of the object of the sentence.

Traditionally, English grammar does not classify articles, determiners and quantifiers as a separate part of speech. Most often they are included as adjectives. Therefore, articles are treated like adjectives. There are definite articles and indefinite articles.

A definite article is used to specify a particular person or object and it is used with both singular and plural nouns. An indefinite article is used to describe an unspecified person or object and it is mostly used with singular countable nouns. In some cases, a noun does not need an article to precede it. Nouns that can function without an article preceding them are called zero article nouns.

Determiners are words used to indicate nouns. A noun or noun phrase comes after the determiner. Many modifying functions served by a determiner are virtually identical to an adjective. Determiners are grouped separately from adjectives since the categories of determiners are limited compared to adjectives.

Sometimes, a determiner will introduce another ... [Find out more ...]

Lost in Lexicon: An Adventure in Words and Numbers

"If this is an adventure, we should just plunge in..."When thirteen-year-old cousins Ivan and Daphne go on a treasure hunt in the rain one summer day, they never expect to stumble into a whole ... [Find out more ...]

The Oxford Dictionary of Difficult Words

We all know what the words cat and dog and mother and tree mean. What we really need is a dictionary that helps us with the tough words, like elucubrate, or demesne, or cynosure. True, a standard ... [Find out more ...]

When You Catch an Adjective, Kill It: The Parts of Speech, for Better and/or Worse What do you get when you mix nine parts of speech, one great writer, and generous dashes of insight, humor, and irreverence? One phenomenally entertaining language book. In his waggish yet authoritative book, Ben Yagoda has managed to undo the dark work of legions of English teachers and libraries of dusty grammar texts. Not since School House Rock have adjectives, adverbs, articles, conjunctions, interjections, nouns, prepositions, pronouns, and verbs been explored with such infectious ... [Find out more ...]

Prepositions are an essential part of speech in the English language because they play a critical role in constructing meaningful sentences. A preposition always comes before a noun in a sentence to show how the noun relates to another word in that sentence. It can also link to pronouns and phrases in a similar manner. A word or phrase that is introduced by a preposition in a sentence is considered the object of the preposition.

Prepositions specify information about time, place and direction within sentences. They are building blocks that show how different words relate to each other in the context of time and space. Prepositions can help to explain how an action occurred, why it happened, where it happened, when it occurred and who did the action in question.

Prepositions can be used to form a prepositional phrase. These phrases are composed of the preposition, the object of the preposition and any adjectives or adverbs attached to the noun or pronoun. A prepositional phrase typically follows the same basic structure. When a prepositional phrase is utilized, the whole phrase acts as a modifier within the sentence. It can function as an adverb, adjective or noun on its own.

In some cases, prepositions can be connected with verbs to form phrasal verbs. These are verbs comprised of more ... [Find out more ...]

Barron's Painless Junior English for Speakers of Other ...

Here''s a very approachable textbook for both children and adults who speak English as their second language. It acquaints students with correct English sentence construction, parts of ... [Find out more ...]

FRANK SCHAFFER PUBLICATIONS IF-5082 DIAGRAMMING BOOK 2 ...

Diagramming enables students to gain a better understanding of sentence structure and parts of speech. Each lesson describes the specific structure under study, gives examples, and ... [Find out more ...]

When You Catch an Adjective, Kill It: The Parts of Speech, for Better and/or Worse What do you get when you mix nine parts of speech, one great writer, and generous dashes of insight, humor, and irreverence? One phenomenally entertaining language book. In his waggish yet authoritative book, Ben Yagoda has managed to undo the dark work of legions of English teachers and libraries of dusty grammar texts. Not since School House Rock have adjectives, adverbs, articles, conjunctions, interjections, nouns, prepositions, pronouns, and verbs been explored with such infectious ... [Find out more ...]

Adjectives are one of the basic parts of speech and writing in the English language. Adjectives are words that function as modifiers for nouns or pronouns. When adjectives appear in a sentence, they will precede the noun or pronoun they are modifying. These words are useful in describing nouns and pronouns. They create a better understanding of a sentence by offering additional details of nouns or pronouns.

Since adjectives are words used for description, they can take on many forms. There are three different degrees of adjectives used in basic speaking and writing. These are positive, comparative and superlative. A positive adjective identifies a single object. A comparative adjective is used with two or more objects in a sentence. A superlative adjective is used with three or more objects.

Adjectives can fall into these categories:

• Possessive adjectives are used to show possession in a sentence. They are like a personal pronoun only they are used to modify a noun or pronoun. Words like my, your, his, her, its, our and their fall into this category.
• Demonstrative adjectives are words designed to draw attention to a specific object within a sentence. Words used in this manner include this, that, these and those.
• Interrogative adjectives are used to pose a question in a sentence. Common words that fall under this category include ... [Find out more ...]

The royal universal British grammar and vocabulary. ...

The 18th century was a wealth of knowledge, exploration and rapidly growing technology and expanding record-keeping made possible by advances in the printing press. In its determination ... [Find out more ...]

Barron's Painless Junior English for Speakers of Other ...

Here''s a very approachable textbook for both children and adults who speak English as their second language. It acquaints students with correct English sentence construction, parts of ... [Find out more ...]

The McGraw-Hill Handbook of English Grammar and Usage Those pesky dangling modifiers, split infinitives, and comma splices­­they infect our spoken and written language with such frequency that even native English speakers find it difficult to determine what's right and what's wrong! The McGraw-Hill Handbook of English Grammar and Usage shows you how to fix these everyday English language mistakes. With commonsense, easy-to-remember usage tips throughout, this handbook features incorrect and correct grammatical examples, a short review of ... [Find out more ...]

Conjunctions form a basic part of speech in the English language. A simple definition of a conjunction is that it joins two parts of a sentence. Conjunctions can be used to link words, phrases, clauses, and sentences into one sentence.

When conjunctions are used in a sentence, they can take a single or compound form. A single form conjunction is a single word. Examples of this conjunction form include “and”, “or”, “but”, “although”, and “because”. A compound conjunction links two or three words together to form a conjunction and it will usually end with the words “as” or “that”. Some examples of this conjunction form include “as long as” and “provided that”. The three basic functions of conjunctions are coordinating, subordinating and correlative.

A coordinating conjunction has the task of joining together individual words, phrases, and independent clauses. The two parts of a sentence that are joined together with a coordinating conjunction must be grammatically equal. Any coordinating conjunction is required to come between the words or clauses that it joins.

With a subordinating conjunction, the purpose is to join a subordinate dependent clause to a main clause. For this reason, a subordinating conjunction is typically found at the beginning of the subordinate clause. It is there to indicate the relationship between the dependent clause and the independent ... [Find out more ...]

Ross's Business English

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free.This is an OCR edition with typos.Excerpt from book:ADVERBS An adverb is a word used to ... [Find out more ...]

Knowledge Adventure READBLASTER9-12 Reading Blaster ...

Total Reading Solution!Product InformationDr. Dabble's Done It Again! Six of Bizarroville's leading citizens havevanished into thin air and all the evidence points to Dr. Dabble! Use ... [Find out more ...]

When You Catch an Adjective, Kill It: The Parts of Speech, for Better And/Or Worse What do you get when you mix nine parts of speech, one great writer, and generous dashes of insight, humor, and irreverence? One phenomenally entertaining language book. In his waggish yet authoritative book, Ben Yagoda has managed to undo the dark work of legions of English teachers and libraries of dusty grammar texts. Not since School House Rock have adjectives, adverbs, articles, conjunctions, interjections, nouns, prepositions, pronouns, and verbs been explored with such infectious ... [Find out more ...]

Verbs and adverbs are two basic parts of speech in the English language. Both types of words are fundamental components of sentence structure.

A verb is a word that shows action or a state of being. Verbs form the heart of a sentence. Every sentence requires one or more verbs to exist. It is a simple thing to remember verb endings since they take on five basic forms. Verbs can be constructed in present tense, past tense, future tense, present participle and past participle.

A subject will come before a verb and an object will come after it. The subject creates the action that the verb represents and the object receives the action. Proper grammar dictates that a subject and verb must agree or be written in the same tense.

Any verb that requires an object to complete their meaning is a transitive verb. If the verb does not require an object, it is an intransitive verb. If a verb has both a direct and indirect object in the same sentence, it is considered a ditransitive verb.

Verbs can also be classified as finite or non-finite. A finite verb expresses a state of being and can stand alone as the main verb in a sentence. A non-finite verb, on the other hand, represents an unfinished thought and requires another ... [Find out more ...]

Ross's Business English

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free.This is an OCR edition with typos.Excerpt from book:ADVERBS An adverb is a word used to ... [Find out more ...]

Knowledge Adventure READBLASTER9-12 Reading Blaster ...

Total Reading Solution!Product InformationDr. Dabble's Done It Again! Six of Bizarroville's leading citizens havevanished into thin air and all the evidence points to Dr. Dabble! Use ... [Find out more ...]