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Eight Parts of Speech

Reviewing the basic parts of speech will help you avoid run-ons and sentence fragments, understand the relationships between words, and create more complex sentences. See A Writer’s Reference for further information and examples.

Nouns

Nouns refer to a person, place, thing, or concept. A complete sentence requires a subject (which is always a noun or pronoun) and a predicate (which is a main verb plus any other modifiers).

• Proper nouns are always capitalized.

Example:
Ms. Mercado began working at the Writing Center in Bryan, Texas, last June.

• Possessive nouns indicate ownership and require an apostrophe. Be careful with apostrophe placement, as it can change the meaning of a sentence.

Examples:

• The student’s papers are due on Monday.
  [One student with multiple papers]
• The students’ papers are due on Monday.
  [Multiple students, each with at least one paper]

Pronouns

Pronouns replace a noun or act as a substitute (antecedent) for a specific noun.

• A pronoun should always agree with its antecedent.

Examples:

• She walked to the library to return her book.
• The librarians, who were passionate about reading and research alike, were eager to share their knowledge about the author.

• First- or second-person pronouns (I, me, my, we, us, our, you, your) are generally discouraged in academic writing.

Verbs

Verbs describe an action or a state of being.

• Main verbs can change form to create tense, especially when combined with helping verbs have, do, and be.

Common Verb Conjugations

Verbs may be active or passive. Active voice expresses meaning more powerfully than passive voice.

Examples:

• The dog bit the boy.
  [Active: the subject performs the action]
• The boy was bitten by the dog.
  [Passive: the subject receives the action]

Some verbs ending in -ing function as nouns and are called gerunds.

Example:
Driving in the rain is dangerous.

Adjectives

Adjectives modify nouns and pronouns and answer questions such as Which one?, What kind?, or How many?

• Articles (a, an, the) are adjectives.
• Some pronouns (all, her, his, its, my, their, this, your) can also function as adjectives.

Example:
Your sister came into the grocery store today.
[Your modifies sister; the and grocery modify store.]

Adverbs

Adverbs modify verbs, adjectives, and other adverbs. They answer questions such as When? Where? How? Why? To what degree?

Examples:

• I looked carefully for the next puzzle piece.
  [How did I look?]
• Are you going out of town next week?
  [When are you going?]

Prepositions

Prepositions usually appear before a noun or pronoun to form a prepositional phrase. These phrases often act as adjectives or adverbs.

Examples:

• She planted flowers in her garden.
  [In her garden modifies planted.]
• After the storm, the field next to the house was dotted with muddy puddles.
  [After the storm and with muddy puddles modify was dotted; next to the house modifies field.]

Conjunctions

Conjunctions connect words, phrases, or clauses.

Coordinating Conjunctions

Coordinating conjunctions connect grammatically equal elements. Remember them using the acronym FANBOYS: for, and, nor, but, or, yet, so.

Example:
Edgar Allan Poe was an accomplished poet, and he also wrote popular short stories.

Correlative Conjunctions

Correlative conjunctions come in pairs and connect equal elements.

Example:
Neither rain nor snow will stop the mail from being delivered.

Conjunctive Adverbs

Conjunctive adverbs (such as however, therefore, finally) can begin an independent clause or connect clauses when preceded by a semicolon.

Examples:

• Finally, it was lunchtime.
• Texas has famously hot summers; however, its winters are surprisingly cold.

Interjections

Interjections express emotion or surprise and are followed by an exclamation point. They are generally not used in formal academic writing.

Example:
Wow! I passed the exam!