Search results for “adjectives”

Do you know all of the grammatical parts of a sentence, or are you a participle of the problem? All joking aside, you have probably heard of a participle but might not know what it is or even what the word means. You also surely use participles in your communication throughout the day. In today’s …

A coordinating conjunction is a word that connects other words or phrases as well as clauses of equal rank. The seven coordinating conjunctions are for, and, nor, but, or, yet, and so. (One way to remember them is by using the acronym FANBOYS as a mnemonic device: For And Nor But Or Yet So.) We …

For some people, punctuation in English might be a fuss over details. For others, it provides vital markers for clear, precise, and eloquent writing. For yet others, a missing apostrophe can represent a great expense. In October 2020, an Australian man claimed in a Facebook post that a real estate agent did not pay his …

A noun phrase is group of two or more words that function as a subject, an object, or a prepositional object in a sentence. The phrase is led by a noun and joined by one or more modifiers that can come before the noun or after it. For example, if you write the man with …

Every English verb has an infinitive, which is the base form of the verb before it is conjugated. It consists of the word to and the present form of the verb (the infinitive stem): e.g., to run, to sing, to write, to follow. Although an infinitive is the base of a verb, it does not …

An adverb is a part of speech that modifies other sentence elements such as verbs, adjectives, and other adverbs. It may also describe infinitives, gerunds, participles, phrases, clauses, or even the rest of the sentence in which it appears. Adverbs address information such as when (she is leaving now), where (she stops here), how (she …

English grammar has its share of technical terms, so unless you regularly teach or study the language, you might furrow your eyebrows if you hear things such as present perfect tense or infinitive verb. Many of us may use such components in our writing and speech without being fully aware of what they are. That …

The basics of English grammar can seem simple, especially when we are looking at sentence structures. Three basic components of a sentence include: Nouns, which are things Verbs, which are actions Adjectives, which are descriptive words But the better you get, the more complexities there are. For instance, did you know that there are such …

When and how to capitalize titles of works and titles of formal rank or professional status can remain a common question. We'll focus on that topic today for additional clarity. (Note that style for capitalizing titles can vary among stylebooks and in-house style guidelines. What we share here offers a baseline that you can follow; …

As the third Sunday in June approaches, many of you may be wondering how to write the name of the holiday—is it Father's Day, Fathers' Day, or Fathers Day? We last looked into the topic of where to properly place holiday apostrophes in a 2018 newsletter. Today we provide an update. Do You Use an …