Following Grammatical Guidelines

The organisation of language is known as grammar. Every word in the English language is a particular part of speech and has a name by which to identify it. Some parts of speech must be included in a sentence for it to make sense. Others are used to enhance your writing and make it interesting to read. The parts of speech that are essential for every sentence are nouns (or pronouns) and verbs.

DISCOVERING NOUNS

Nouns are the names of things, people or places. There are different types of nouns but you must include at least one noun or one pronoun in each sentence you write. There will be more about pronouns later.

Identifying concrete or common nouns

A concrete or common noun is the name given to a physical thing – something that can be seen:

book	cake	dog	elephant
fire	garage	hair	jewel
key	letter	needle	orchid
parchment	queen	recipe	sailor
tatto	volunteer	watch	zoo

Forming Plurals

A noun is singular if it refers to one thing. Plural means there is more than one of the item. To make a concrete noun plural, it is usually necessary to add an ‘s’ at the end of the word:

Singular	Plural
bone	bones
dog	dogs
ear	ears
friend	friends
simile	similes
metaphor	metaphors
zoo	zoos

Words that end in ‘ch’, ‘s’, ‘sh’ and ‘z’ have to add ‘es’ for ease of pronunciation:

Singular	Plural
bush	bushes
buzz	buzzes
crutch	crutches
church	churches
dash	dashes
duchess	duchesses
flash	flashes
princess	princesses
witness	witnesses

Some words keep the same word for the plural as the singular:

Singular	Plural
cod	cod
deer	deer
salmon	salmon
sheep	sheep

Other words change the form of the word as in the following:

Singular	Plural
child	children
foot	feet
goose	geese
ox	oxen
man	men
tooth	teeth
woman	women

Identifying vowels and consonants

All words are composed of vowels (a, e, i, o, u) and consonants (all other letters). Words that end in ‘y’ preceded by a consonant change the ‘y’ to an ‘i’ before adding ‘es’:

Singular	Plural
ally	allies
county	counties
cry	cries
enemy	enemies
reply	replies

Some nouns that end in ‘f’ or ‘fe’ change the ending to ‘ves’ to make the plural:

Singular	Plural
half	halves
knife	knives
wolf	wolves

Unfortunately some words ending in ‘f’ keep it before adding an ‘s’:

Singular	Plural
hoof	hoofs
proof	proofs

For the following word you have a choice:

dwarf

dwarfs or dwarves

Using proper nouns

A proper noun is the name of a person, a place or a particular thing or institution. It always starts with a capital letter.

Names of people

Alice	Bernard	Betty	Clive
Elizabeth	Lennie	Lucy	Richard

Titles are also written with a capital letter:

Mrs Alexander	Mr Bell
Prince Edward	The Earl of Northumberland
Lady Thatcher	The Countess of Wessex
The Duchess of York

Names of places

England	Guildford	Hampshire	London
River Thames	Mount Everest	The Forest of Dean	The Lake District

Names of buildings and institutions

The British Broadcasting Corporation	The British Museum
Buckingham Palace	Cleopatra’s Needle
Nelson’s Column	The Royal Academy
The Royal Air Force	The United Nations
Windsor Castle

Religious names

All proper nouns connected with religion start with capital letters.

Bible	Christian	Christianity	Christmas
Easter	Eid	Judaism	Jew
Hanukka	Hindu	Islam	Koran

Looking at abstract nouns

An abstract noun is more vague. It refers to a quality, an idea, a state of mind, an occasion, a feeling or a time. It cannot be seen or touched. The following are all abstract nouns:

anger	beauty	birth	brightness
criticism	comfort	darkness	excellence
happiness	health	jealousy	month
patience	peace	pregnancy	war

Finding collective nouns

Collective nouns are nouns that refer to a group of objects or people. Although they represent a number of things, they are singular words as they can be made plural.

Singular	Plural
class	classes
choir	choirs
collection	collections
congregation	congregations
crew	crews
crowd	crowds
flock	flocks
group	groups
herd	herds
orchestra	orchestras
team	teams

Introducing verbal nouns or gerunds

The form of the verb known as the present participle always ends in ‘ing’. As well as being used as a verb, this form can also be used as a noun. It is called a gerund or verbal noun. Look at the following sentences which use gerunds.

• I like shopping.
• The baby’s crying annoyed her.
• The howling of the wolves kept the hunters awake.
• The growling of the guard dog terrified the burglars.
• The pianist’s playing was superb.

Sorting out subjects and objects

The subject of the sentence is the noun or pronoun that is the main reason for the sentence. It performs the action.

• The boy ran across the road.

‘The boy’ is the subject of the sentence.

The object of a sentence is the noun or pronoun to which something is done.

• Lucy played the piano.

The ‘piano’ is the object of the sentence. A sentence must contain a subject but there does not have to be an object in the sentence. The following sentence does not contain an object:

• Lucy plays very well.