We all write every single day, whether it’s a text message, report, or email. And that means we all compose sentences that are crafted from different parts. Yup, there are different parts of sentences. And guess what? Learning what the different parts of a sentence are called can show a mastery of language. By elementary school, kids begin learning about the different parts of a …
By Ashley Austrew Great grammar is a reason to celebrate. That’s why March 4 is designated as National Grammar Day! You might think every day is grammar day when you’re Thesaurus.com (and you’d be correct), but National Grammar Day is an honest-to-goodness observance, established in 2008 by Martha Brockenbrough, the founder of the Society for the Promotion of Good Grammar. We’ll gladly take any opportunity …
As we all know, Mother’s Day is the holiday where we let our moms know how special they are. But do you know how to correctly punctuate the name of this day? The apostrophe can be the mother of all hard-to-use punctuation marks, and it seems to be hanging around the wrong place. Why is the apostrophe so often up to no good? Didn’t it …
Take note: sang and sung are not the same. In this article, we’ll explain why sing is considered an irregular verb, show how and when to correctly use the words sang and sung, and provide examples of all three words being properly used in sentences. The words sang and sung are forms of the irregular verb sing. Sang is the past tense form and sung …
We all know what Father’s Day is: the one day of the year where we take time to recognize how special dads are. Of course, we can do that every other day of the year, too! Another thing we can do every day is make sure to use apostrophes correctly. Apostrophes are a particularly tricky bit of punctuation, and one of them seems to have …
Ensuring your sentences have proper punctuation can be tough, even when you are only dealing with one punctuation mark. We often have our hands full dealing with just a single colon, semicolon, or—heaven forbid—a comma. So you might find yourself frazzled upon adding quotation marks to what’s already a heavily punctuated sentence. Before you panic, you can use this quick guide to help you keep …
The forward slash is a versatile punctuation mark that can be used in a variety of places. You can use one to say that you are a master of grammar and/or spelling. You can use one to describe where you were when the new millennium started on 1/1/2001. You can even use one to say which side you support in the fiercely contested “toilet paper …
Second only to the use of the Oxford comma, the creation of possessives for words ending in S and the S sound is one of the most hotly debated grammar topics in the English language. The issue isn’t as cut and dried as some grammar rules, such as what punctuation is used to end a declarative sentence. (A period. Why can’t all grammar rules be this …
Right now, you are reading words. If you continue to read these words, you will learn a lot more about grammar. Specifically, we are going to learn about a neat way to use verbs. I am talking about the way that we use verbs to describe actions that are happening right now. So, let’s not waste any more time and check out a cool part …
In grammar, we use adjectives to modify and describe nouns and pronouns. The words funny and blue are examples of adjectives. We also use participles to create some of the different verb tenses. The words jumping and tangled are examples of participles. Sometimes, though, the participles don’t want to be left out of the modifying fun and decide to act as adjectives. There’s a fun …
For as long as we’ve had language, people have been learning about grammar. If those tricky verbs have been giving you a hard time, then you’ve come to the right place to learn about a cool way that we use verbs to talk about both the past and present. So, please continue reading if troublesome verbs have been driving you mad. It’s time to take …
Most of the time, adverbs are words that we use to modify verbs, adjectives, or other adverbs. However, some adverbs—such as the adverb however—can also be used like conjunctions. We call these adverbs conjunctive adverbs. A conjunctive adverb acts differently than other adverbs by connecting independent clauses that can stand alone as sentences. In this way it is still acting as a modifier by using …