GrammarPhile Blog

What Are the 8 Parts of Speech?

Posted by Sara Richmond   Mar 10, 2022 8:00:00 AM

Quick explanations with simple examples

 

First, what’s the benefit of knowing the parts of speech? Isn’t this just nerd language about language, irrelevant to daily life? Nope. Learning what words do and how to categorize them will result in:

  • Clarity. When you learn the building blocks of language, just like place value and the decimal number system in math, you’ll be less confused. Language becomes more of a friend instead of a stumbling block.
  • Confidence. Once you have the basics down, you’ll be sure of your ability to wield language and stand behind your words.
  • Communication. Armed with this knowledge, you’ll write and speak more effectively.
  • Connections. Understanding the foundations of your own language will enable you to identify correlations in other languages.
  • Conquest. Nothing will stand in your way. You’ll slice your way through every obstacle using only words. All your dreams will come true.*

So, let’s get down to grammatical tacks.

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Topics: adverbs, adjectives, conjunctions, pronouns, verbs, prepositions, parts of speech, Nouns, articles

Don't Confuse Adverbs and Adjectives

Posted by Phil Jamieson   Apr 23, 2014 7:00:00 AM


Adjectives that should be adverbs

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Topics: adverbs, adjectives

Super Bowl Party Fodder

Posted by Phil Jamieson   Jan 31, 2014 6:30:00 AM

football playerOK, so the game's a close one and it's the fourth quarter. The chips and salsa are long gone, but the beer and sodas are holding out and the excitement is palpable.

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Topics: adverbs, adjectives

Video: Adverb and Adjective Combinations

Posted by Phil Jamieson   Jul 24, 2013 5:30:00 AM

Phil Jamieson (Founder/President of ProofreadNOW.com) discusses how to properly combine adjectives and adverbs in this GrammarTip video.

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Topics: adverbs, adjectives, GrammarTip video, Video

Right Words, Wrong Words

Posted by Julie DeSilva   Feb 14, 2012 5:30:00 AM

Good - well. Good is an adjective. Well is typically used as an adverb but may be used as an adjective to refer to the state of someone's health.

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Topics: adverbs, adjectives

More Compound Adjectives

Posted by Julie DeSilva   Dec 6, 2011 5:30:00 PM

We began last week's post with "No aspect of style causes greater difficulty than compound adjectives." Some readers took exception to that statement. Okay, it was over the top, perhaps. But you would just not believe the debates these things can cause when a group of strong-willed (strong willed?) grammarians get together and haggle over a client's document! Surely we can all agree that mistakes concerning compound adjectives are at least far too commonplace.

Here are two more rules, with examples, covering some words you may have wondered about:

A number of adjective-noun combinations (such as real estate or social security) and noun-noun combinations (such as life insurance or money market) are actually well-established compound nouns serving as adjectives. Unlike short-term, low-risk, red-carpet, and part-time, these expressions refer to well-known concepts or institutions. Because they are easily grasped as a unit, they do not require a hyphen.

  • accounts payable records
  • branch office reports
  • income tax return
  • life insurance policy
  • public relations adviser
  • word processing center
  • nuclear energy plant
  • social security tax
  • exception: a mail-order business

When a compound adjective consists of a noun plus an adjective, hyphenate this combination whether it appears before or after the noun.

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Topics: hyphenation, adjectives

Compound Adjectives

Posted by Julie DeSilva   Nov 29, 2011 5:30:00 AM

No aspect of style causes greater difficulty than compound adjectives. When a compound adjective is shown hyphenated in the dictionary, you can assume only that the expression is hyphenated when it occurs directly before a noun. When the same combination of words falls elsewhere in the sentence, the use or omission of hyphens depends on how the words are used.

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Topics: hyphenation, adjectives

Do you write really good? Please say it ain't so!

Posted by Julie DeSilva   Sep 27, 2011 5:30:00 AM

Don't "wreck" your writing by misusing adverbs as adjectives, and don't "get lost" misusing adjectives as adverbs.

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Topics: adverbs, adjectives, writing tips

Grammar Questions Answered

Posted by Phil Jamieson   Mar 22, 2011 5:30:00 AM

Here are some questions we've received from readers and clients, followed by our answers. Hope you find these helpful!

Question:  Would you hyphenate "we must perform our work with a high-level of technical expertise, professionalism, and integrity"?

Answer:  In this example, there should be no hyphen in "high level" - that's because it is not a compound adjective. "Level" is a noun that is modified by "high."

Now, if you take out the word "of" there, then "high-level" becomes a compound adjective and it IS hyphenated. "We need high-level expertise in order to compete."

More examples:

  • He displayed a high level of intelligence.
  • She is a high-level consultant at Monsanto.
  • They sought higher-level access at the Kennedy Space Center.
  • He showed a high level of interest in our design.

Question:  It is my understanding that abbreviations such as "etc., i.e., and e.g." are only used parenthetically, if at all. Why not simply write "and so forth, that is, and for example"?

Answer:  Yes, why not use "that is" and "for example"? Well, sometimes people want to be quicker with their writing, so abbreviations are brought in. Some clients of ours have in their style guides prohibitions on using these abbreviations, but most people rely on them, we see.

The biggest trouble we see with them is when writers confuse them, using "i.e." when they mean "e.g." And in British form, neither takes a comma, whereas in American form, both take commas.

Style guides say it's a matter of personal preference. We'd never change "for example" to "e.g." in a client document, and we'd only change "e.g." to "for example" if the style guide directed us to.

Question:  What's the rule for writing the name of a newsletter--italicized or underlined?

Answer:  Chicago style (Chicago Manual of Style, 16th edition) has this:

CMS8.2: Chicago prefers italics to set off titles of major or freestanding works such as books, journals, movies, and paintings...Quotation marks are usually reserved for the titles of subsections of larger works--including chapter and article titles and the titles of poems that have been collected into a series.

Chicago does not use underlining at all, apparently.

So, we suggest putting a newsletter title in italics.

Do you have any questions you'd like our grammar experts to answer? Click here to submit your question!

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Topics: hyphenation, italicize, adjectives, abbreviations, grammar, Chicago Manual of Style

Fun with Adverbs

Posted by Phil Jamieson   Jun 29, 2010 5:00:00 AM

Let's spend some time this week on parts of speech. This post is on the adverb. The fun is in getting them right, and, if your personality is such, helping others with their adverbs.

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Topics: adverbs, adjectives, preposition, parts of speech

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