TERMS
Parts of Speech
Noun: a word that names a person, place, thing, quality, or idea (examples: Maggie,
Alabama, clarinet, satisfaction, socialism).
Pronoun: a word used in place of a noun (examples: he, she, they, ours, somebody).
See “Types of Pronouns” below.
Verb: a word or group of words indicating the action or state of being of a subject
(examples: jump, hop, skip, run, is, are, were, will be, will have been).
Preposition: a word that starts a prepositional phrase. In the following examples of
prepositional phrases, the first word is a preposition: around the house, under the car, in
the back, through the roof.
Articles: the words a, an, and the.
Adjective: a word used to modify a noun (example: the red wagon) or pronoun
(example: ordinary one).
Adverb: a word used to modify a verb (warmly greet), an adjective (only three people),
or another adverb (quite seriously damaged).
Conjunction: a word that links parts of a sentence to each other. See “coordinating
conjunction,” “subordinating conjunction,” and “correlative conjunction” under “Types
of Conjunctions, Transitional Words, and Transitional Phrases” below.
Sentence Structure Terms
Phrase:
A phrase is a group of words that lacks a subject, a complete verb, or both.
Examples:
In the dark
Finding the answer
Clause:
A clause is a group of related words with both a subject and a predicate (verb).