I'm beginning a series of grammar posts targeted toward adults who never quite grasped grammar in school, but now, they want a better understanding of the mysterious, mind-boggling subject.
Today we'll talk about the parts of speech.
When learning the parts of speech, it's best to think of each term as a job description and not a category of a specific list of words. Words aren't confined to doing one job. The word name can be a noun: My name is Lill. Or, it can be a verb: I will name my cat Fred.
Yes, I'm a grammar geek. I aim to keep these posts light-hearted, informal, and simple. However, I do use technical grammar terms. I call a gerund a gerund -- not an -ing word because sometimes an -ing word is actually a present participle.
See, sometimes keeping it simple isn't so easy for me.
Here's a brief overview of the type of work the major parts of speech perform in a sentence.
Verb: Verbs come in two varieties. Action verbs show action. State of being verbs link or connect.
Nouns and Pronouns: Nouns name things. Pronouns can take the place of a noun. (There are no anti-nouns.)
Adjectives and Adverbs: Both of these parts of speech are in the description business.
Prepositions and Conjunctions: These are connectors.
We'll get to each of these parts of speech in due time.
As we go along, you'll also learn about different sentence patterns. Varying sentence types and lengths results in strong, efficient writing.
Thank you for reading and stay tuned for the next post.
