Time to Write
If you’re a native speaker of English, most of the information in the Parts of Speech area of Grammar Essentials comes pretty naturally for you, but all of us have trouble with some aspects...
Category: Level 3 pages
Wrong Word
Wrong word errors are really common and are number one on the list. Sometimes, we make a wrong word error when we are using the thesaurus and trying to find the biggest word we...
Comma After Introductory Element
It’s important to remember that introductory words and phrases—any words or phrases that come before the main clause in a sentence—should be set off with a comma. Here is an example of a sentence...
Pronouns
Pronouns are actually just another type of noun, but because they’re such an important noun type and so commonly used, they’re usually classified as a separate part of speech. A pronoun is a noun that...
Verbs
Verbs are the parts of speech that show action or indicate a state of being. We put them with nouns, and we create complete sentences. Like nouns, verbs are foundational in our vocabulary, and...
Dashes
What is that dash for anyway? There are two different kinds of dashes: the em dash and the en dash. These are very different than their smaller cousin, the hyphen. You can remember dash...
Ellipses
What are those three little dots for? A lot of people seem to use an ellipsis to show a pause or hint at the future in informal writing. Ellipses appear this way frequently in...
Exclamation Marks
When should you use an exclamation mark? Honestly, you won’t use a lot of exclamation marks in academic writing. The exclamation mark is kind of the equivalent of yelling, and most academic writing situations...
Hyphens
Hyphenating Words “The basic rule of hyphens . . . is that they’re used to form compound modifiers, that is, to link two or more words that are acting as adjectives or sometimes adverbs.” (Casagrande,...
Parentheses
Parentheses: More Than Helpful Emoticon Tools Interestingly, parentheses can do more than make smiley faces :) and sad faces :( like these. Although they are quite handy for these important emoticons, they serve an...