There are up to five forms for each verb: root, third-person singular, present participle, past, and past participle. Root Form of the Verb The root form of a verb is the base form of the word. Roots have not been …

Pronouns are the words you substitute for other nouns when your reader or listener already knows which nouns you’re referring to. For example, you might say, “I have a dog. He’s brown and white.” There’s no need to clarify that …

Prepositions indicate relationships between other words in a sentence. Many prepositions tell you where something is or when something happened. Most prepositions have several definitions, so the meaning changes quite a bit in different contexts. Ending a sentence with a …

Nouns are everywhere in our writing. But what are all the types of nouns you come across, and how do you use them? What is a Noun? A noun is a word that names something, such as a person, place, …

What are They? Ouch! Oh my! Wow! Yikes! If you’ve ever uttered any of the words above, you’ve used an interjection, whether you knew it at the time or not. The word interjection comes from the Latin words inter (between) and jacĕre (to throw). …

Without conjunctions, you’d be forced to express every complex idea in a series of short, simplistic sentences: I like cooking. I like eating. I don’t like washing dishes afterward. How do Conjunctions work? Conjunctions are words that link other words, phrases, …

Articles are words that define a noun as specific or unspecific. Consider the following examples: After the long day, the cup of tea tasted particularly good. By using the article the, we’ve shown that it was one specific day that was long and one specific …

An adverb is a word that modifies (describes) a verb (he sings loudly), an adjective (very tall), another adverb (ended too quickly), or even a whole sentence (Fortunately, I had brought an umbrella). Adverbs often end in -ly, but some …

What is an adjective? Adjectives are words that describe the qualities or states of being of nouns: enormous, doglike, silly, yellow, fun, fast. They can also describe the number of nouns: many, few, millions, eleven. Adjectives modify nouns Most students learn that …

The basic writing portfolio Let’s say you’re a college student hungry for an internship in a scrappy local newsroom, and a professor who’s friendly with an editor there has given you their email address. You’ve written a few stories for your campus newspaper—nothing amazing, …

A sentence diagram is a visual organization system that you can use to see how the parts of speech like nouns, verbs, prepositions, and articles work together and relate to each other in any given sentence. We’ll explain everything you …

What do “all right” and “alright” mean? There are currently two forms of this word because the English language is continuously changing, and historically, words often had many different forms before they became standardized. For example, “altogether” was once written …

What is a straw man argument? A straw man argument, sometimes called a straw person argument or spelled strawman argument, is the logical fallacy of distorting an opposing position into an extreme version of itself and then arguing against that extreme version. …

What is the purpose of an essay title? An essay title tells readers what your essay is about. This gives them a heads up on what to expect from the essay and if they’re reading it to conduct their own …

Certain words in English lend themselves to misspellings. They may cause confusion about whether to use a single letter or double letters—like “cc,” “ss,” or “pp”—or how a prefix or suffix affects a root word, or they may be words that look …

What is symbolism in writing, and how does it work? Symbolism is the use of words or images to symbolize specific concepts, people, objects, or events. In some cases, symbolism is broad and used to communicate a work’s theme, like …