Some people have said that teachers teach English differently from foreign languages. They don’t use the right technical terms for the cases, such as nominative or accusative, and that means children don’t have such a strong command of grammar.
I don’t know how true that is, but it was certainly true in my own schooling, and I’ve seen the effects when teaching myself.
Whatever your level of grammatical knowledge, I thought it would help a few pupils if I wrote down the most common terms and what they all mean with simple examples (with each term shown in red).
66 and 99
This is just another name for quotation marks or speech marks (see article) because they look like the numbers in certain fonts, eg he said, “Hello.“
Abbreviation
A series of letters standing for different words, eg BBC for British Broadcasting Corporation.
Abstract noun
A noun for an idea, eg peace.
Accent
Punctuation mark in words that come from French (usually the acute accent that slopes up) or that have an extra syllable (the grave accent that slopes down), eg née or learnèd.
Acronym
An abbreviation that can be pronounced as a word, eg Var for Video Assistant Referee. (Note that you only use a capital for the first letter of acronyms.)
Adjective
A word to describe a noun or a pronoun, eg the man is cool or he is cool.
Adverb
A word to describe a verb, adjective or another adverb, eg he ran quickly, he was really jealous or she ran really fast.
Ampersand
A symbol used to stand for the word and, eg Marks & Spencer.
Antonym
A word that means the opposite of another word, eg cold is an antonym for hot.
Apostrophe
A punctuation mark to show a contraction or the possessive, eg it‘s raining or Mark‘s book.
Article
A word that introduces a noun, eg a tree (the indirect article) or the table (the direct article).
Asterisk
A punctuation mark to link to a footnote or replace bad language, eg * see footnote or he was a real s**t.
Auxiliary (or helping) verb
The first part of the continuous present, future, imperfect, conditional, perfect or the pluperfect tense, eg he is giving, he was giving, he will be giving, he would be giving, he has given or he had given. The one ending in -ing is called the present participle while the other one is called the past participle.
Brackets
Punctuation marks to separate less important information, an abbreviation or a definition in the middle of a sentence, eg he loved to swim (when he got the chance), he worked for the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) or the painter used chiaroscuro (light and shade).
Collective noun
A noun for a collection of animals, eg a dazzle of zebras.
Concrete (or common) noun
A noun for something you can physically touch, eg concrete.
Circumflex
A punctuation mark that looks like a hat over vowels in words that come from French, eg rôle.
Colon
A punctuation mark that introduces a list if the first part could be a sentence on its own, eg he bought everything he needed for dinner: pizza, salad and a bottle of wine.
Comma
A punctuation mark to separate different parts of a sentence (see article), eg he liked playing rugby, football and cricket.
Complex sentence
A sentence that contains at least one subordinating conjunction or a relative pronoun, eg He went outside because it was so hot or She was the woman who had been in the café.
Compound sentence
A sentence that contains at least one coordinating conjunction, eg Richard was happy, but Jane was sad.
Conditional tense
The tense that shows what might happen given a certain condition. It can be used in the present or perfect tense, both in the simple or continuous form, eg I would give, I would be giving, I would have given or I would have been giving.
Conjunction
A word that can either join two sentences together or separate words in a list (see article), eg he went outside because it was hot or he liked to pay with a credit card or cash.
Contraction
A shortening of two words using an apostrophe, eg isn’t for is not.
Curly brackets
Punctuation marks that are rarely used in English but appear in music and Mathematics, eg the set of odd numbers = {1, 3, 5, 7…}
Definite article
The word the, eg the table. (Note that you pronounce it with a short ‘e’ before words that start with a consonant sound, such as table, but with a long ‘e’ before words that start with a vowel sound, such as our or hour.
Determiner
A word that describes or introduces a noun, eg that book or his homework. A determiner can be an article or a possessive pronoun, so it’s not really a separate category in the parts of speech.
Direct object
The direct object of a sentence is whatever suffers the action of the verb—in other words, whatever has something done to it, eg he kicked the football.
Exclamation mark
A punctuation mark that shows someone is shouting, making a joke or giving a command, eg Shut up!, Two elephants fly off a cliff—jumbo jets! or Open the door!
FANBOYS
A mnemonic or way of remembering all the coordinating conjunctions using the first letter of each in an acrostic, ie For, And, Nor, But, Or, Yet and So.
Fragment
A sentence that’s missing a word or words, eg Because he was annoyed.
Fronted adverbial
A phrase at the start of a sentence (also called an opener or sentence starter) to describe when, where or how something happens, eg At the corner of the street, At five past 10 or With great difficulty.
Full-stop
A punctuation mark to show an abbreviation that doesn’t end with the same letter as the original word or the end of a sentence, eg Prof. Jackson or He went to the shops.
Future tense
The tense that shows something will happen in the future. It comes in two forms for any verb: the simple and continuous, eg I will have or I will be having. You can also create a kind of future tense by using to go as a modal verb, eg I am going to visit my sister.
Hashtag
A punctuation mark that stands for the word ‘number’ or that precedes a tag on social media such as Facebook or Instagram, eg #1 or #wildlifephotography.
Homophone
A word that sounds like another word although it’s spelt differently, eg there, they’re and their are homophones.
Indefinite article
The word a or an, eg a table or an apple.
Indirect object
Usually, the person who benefits from a transaction, eg he gave him the book.
Infinitive
The basic form of any verb, eg he wanted to go swimming.
Interjection
An expression of emotion or a word that helps you play for time when answering a question, eg wow or well.
Inverted commas
Loosely, this is just another name for quotation marks or speech marks (see article). However, it should really only be the single variety used for quotations from a text, eg he said, “Hello“ or the author talks about ‘the sublime verdure‘.
Mood
Three main forms of any verb: the indicative, imperative and subjunctive, eg I am the best, be the best or if I were the best. In addition, you have active and passive moods, eg he taps the table or the table is tapped by him. Finally, there are a few weird ones like the pseudo-imperative, exclamative and optative, but not even I can recognise those!
Noun
A person, place or thing, eg woman, town or shoe. There are three types: collective, concrete (or common), abstract and proper nouns.
Object
The (direct) object of a sentence is whatever suffers the action of the verb—in other words, whatever has something done to it, eg he kicked the football.
Opener
A phrase at the start of a sentence (also called a fronted adverbial or sentence starter) to describe when, where or how something happens, eg At the corner of the street, At five past 10 or With great difficulty.
Parts of speech
The nine main types of words, ie adjectives, adverbs, articles, conjunctions, interjections, nouns, prepositions, pronouns and verbs.
Participle
The final part of the continuous present, future, imperfect, conditional, perfect or the pluperfect tense, eg he is giving, he will be giving, he was giving, he would be giving, he has given or he had given. The one ending in -ing is called the present participle while the other one is called the past participle. (Note that the present participle is called a gerund if it’s used as a noun, eg Typing is a good skill to have.)
Past tense
The tense that shows something happened in the past or used to happen. There are four different past tenses: the simple past or preterite (I did), the imperfect (eg I was doing), the perfect (eg I have done) and the pluperfect (eg I had done). The perfect and pluperfect also have a continuous as well as simple form, eg I have been doing or I had been doing.
Per cent sign
Punctuation mark showing the percentage value, eg 30%.
Personal pronoun
A pronoun used to represent a noun that is either the subject, direct object or indirect object of the sentence, eg he kicked the dog or the criminal tricked him or she sent him the letter.
Phrase
A group of words that belong together, eg railway bridge.
Possessive pronoun
A pronoun used to represent a person, animal or thing that owns something else, eg his shoes, its collar or their windows.
Preposition
A word that shows position in time or space, eg at four o’clock or under the bridge.
Present tense
The tense that shows something is happening now. It comes in three forms for any verb: the simple, continuous (or progressive) and emphatic, eg I have, I am having or I do have.
Pronoun
A word that stands for a noun, eg he.
Proper noun
A noun that is the name of something or someone, eg London or Harrison Ford.
Question mark
Punctuation mark that goes after a question, eg what time is it?
Quotation marks
This is just another name for speech marks or 66 and 99 (see article), eg he said, “Hello.“
Relative pronoun
A word that relates to someone or something that’s just been mentioned in the same sentence, eg the woman whom I saw this morning or the shoe that was on the floor.
Semicolon
Punctuation mark that either stands for because or so in a sentence or separates items in a list that already have commas in them, eg It was hot; he had to go outside or London, England; Paris, France and Berlin, Germany.
Sentence
A full sentence can take many forms (see article), but it usually has at least a subject and verb (plus direct and indirect objects and other words sometimes), eg The cat sat on the mat. There are three different types of sentences: simple, compound and complex.
Sentence starter
A phrase at the start of a sentence (also called an opener or fronted adverbial) to describe when, where or how something happens, eg At the corner of the street, At five past 10 or With great difficulty.
Simple sentence
A sentence that doesn’t have a conjunction or a relative pronoun in it, eg He tapped the table.
Speech marks
This is just another name for quotation marks or 66 and 99 (see article), eg he said, “Hello.“
Square brackets
Punctuation marks that are similar to regular brackets, but they’re usually used to show that the writer has added extra letters or words so that a quotation makes sense, eg He love[s] roses.
Stroke
Punctuation mark (slash in US English) that means and/or and is also the equivalent of the division sign in Maths, eg he wanted different men/women or the answer was 2/3.
Synonym
A word that means the same as another word, eg small is a synonym for little.
Subject
The subject of a sentence is the word or words that control the finite verb in the main clause of a sentence. It may be just a pronoun or a noun phrase including a/an or the, eg she headed the football or the woman parked her car.
Tilde
Punctuation mark usually over the n in words that come from Spanish, eg señor.
Umlaut
Punctuation mark (diaeresis in English) over the a, o or u in words that usually come from German, eg über.
Verb
A doing word, eg skips. The words be and become (in all their forms) are also verbs.
Wabits (or Wabbits)
A mnemonic or way of remembering all the subordinating conjunctions using the first letter of some of them in an acrostic, eg When, Although, Because, (Before,) If, Though and Since.
Word
A morphological unit or collection of letters side-by-side on a page, eg text.
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