English Grammar

What is a clause?

A group of words that contains a subject and a verb, serving as a fundamental building block of sentences.

What can clauses be?

Can be either independent (capable of standing alone as a complete sentence) or dependent (unable to stand alone and requiring an independent clause to complete its meaning).

What is a part of speech?

A category of words that share a similar grammatical function within a sentence. Understanding this helps us in analyzing how words function and can improve our writing and analysis.

What are the 8 main parts of speech in English?

Nouns, pronouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, prepositions, conjunctions, and interjections.

Noun

A word that names a person, place, thing, or idea. They can be classified in various ways, such as common versus proper (ex: “dog” vs. “Fido”), concrete versus abstract (ex: “chair” vs. “love”), or singular versus plural (ex: “cat” vs. “cats”).

Pronoun

A word that takes the place of a noun.

Verb

A word that expresses an action, occurrence, or state of being, and is essential for forming a complete sentence. Can be action words, words of being or state (“is”, “appears”), can change form to show different tenses, and are used to connect the subject to the rest of the sentence.

Adjective

A word that describes or modifies a noun or pronoun, answering questions like “what kind?”, “how many?”, or “which one?”. They provide more detail about the qualities, characteristics, or quantity of a person, place, or thing.

Adverb

A word that modifies a verb, adjective, and another adverb.

Preposition

A word that shows the relationship between a noun or pronoun and another word in a sentence.

Conjunction

A word that connects other words, phrases, or clauses.

Interjection

A word that expresses strong emotion and often stands alone.

What is a sentence subject?

The part of a sentence that performs the action or is being described; it is the noun or pronoun that the sentence is about. To find it, identify the verb and ask who or what is performing the action.

What are the four types of sentences?

Simple sentence, Compound sentence, Complex sentence, Compound-Complex sentence.

What is a simple sentence?

One independent clause and no dependent clauses. Ex: My aunt enjoyed taking the hayride with you.

What is a compound sentence?

Multiple independent clauses but no dependent clauses. Ex: The clown frightened the little boy, and he ran of screaming.

What is a complex sentence?

One independent clause and at least one dependent clause. Ex: After Bob added up all the sales, he discovered that the lemonade stand was 32 cents short.

What is a compound-complex sentence?

Multiple independent clauses and at least one dependent clause. Ex: Catch-22 is widely regarded as Joseph Heller’s best novel, and because Heller served in World War 2, which the novel satirizes, the zany but savage wit of the novel packs an extra punch.

Grammar for stronger sentences.

Include sentence variety, use a number of different sentence types keeps your reader engaged. Use specific sentence subjects, instead of saying “this”, use the actual subject like “This questionable choice”. Keep verbs close to the sentence subject and toward the front of the sentence to avoid passive voice.

Passive Voice

The subject of a sentence is acted upon by the verb. In persuasive writing, it undermines your tone and interrupts argumentative flow. To correct it, ensure that your sentence subject is verb-ing rather than being verbed. Ex: The copies of F451 were collected by Ms. Soule.

What is comma splice?

When you join two independent clauses with a comma and no conjunction. THIS IS BAD. You can fix this by adding a conjunction (and, or, nor, for, but), change the comma to a semicolon, or make each independent clause its own sentence.