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Year-End Quiz: 2022

It's another new year, and all of us at GrammarBook.com hope yours is off to an inspired start—including looking forward to another full year of mastering American English. At the start of each new year, we review what we've explored with you during the previous twelve months of discussion and study. The 2022 master quiz …

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Predicate Nouns: Usage and Examples

Michelangelo was a painter. Mr. Yao is a mathematician. Her favorite gifts are roses. In each of these sentences, we have a subject, a verb (more specifically, a linking verb), and another noun. The second noun in each sentence renames or identifies the subject noun (Michelangelo = painter, Mr. Yao = mathematician, gifts = roses). …

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Object Complements: Usage and Examples

Those who speak, write, and study English are typically familiar with how nouns are enhanced by adjectives and other nouns, such as appositives and subject complements. Examples The brown satchel belongs to the lawyer. (adjective describing the subject noun, satchel) Jenna is a lawyer. (subject complement renaming the subject noun, Jenna) My sister Jenna, a …

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Elliptical Sentence Constructions

Mr. Burns is wiser than I. Tara knows more about football than baseball. Yama's thinking seeks truth; his writing, the expression of it. Many of us are familiar with these types of statements in English. They are elliptical sentence constructions, which omit sentence components without losing clarity. Those components can be words, phrases, or clauses. …

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Subject Complements: Usage and Examples

The word complement in English means "something that completes or makes perfect; either of two parts or things needed to complete the whole." A subject complement in English describes or renames a sentence subject and completes the sense of the verb by means of an adjective, a noun, a pronoun, a possessive noun or pronoun, …

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Interjections: What They Are and Examples

Way to go! If you're engaging this discussion, you have a sincere interest in understanding how specific parts of speech function in American English. Congrats! An English interjection communicates a writer's or speaker's feeling or focus in emphasizing a statement or drawing someone's attention to it. It is a reaction to someone or something. Interjections …

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When to Use (and Not Use) a Comma Before Which

Writing and speaking in American English often includes the relative pronouns which and that. We use these words to provide essential and nonessential (also known as restrictive and nonrestrictive) information that further explains or identifies. The distinction between which and that was once more established within daily formal writing. The word which was used for …

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Interrogative Sentences: Usage and Examples

The English language includes four types of sentences: declarative, interrogative, exclamatory, and imperative. This discussion will focus on interrogative sentences. What Is an Interrogative Sentence? A declarative sentence "declares" something (e.g., facts, thoughts, opinions), an exclamatory sentence imparts a strong expression or emotion, and an imperative sentence issues a command. An interrogative sentence asks a …

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Subjective Case: Usage and Examples

Case in English grammar involves the forms that nouns and pronouns take to indicate their function. The three cases in English are subjective, objective, and possessive. In this discussion, we'll review the subjective case. What Is the Subjective Case? The subjective case is the case we use for a noun or a pronoun that is …

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Exclamatory Sentences: Usage and Examples

The English language includes four types of sentences: declarative, interrogative, exclamatory, and imperative. This discussion will focus on exclamatory sentences. What Is an Exclamatory Sentence? A declarative sentence “declares” something (e.g., facts, thoughts, opinions), an interrogative sentence asks a question, and an imperative sentence issues a command. An exclamatory sentence imparts a strong expression or …

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