Category: Level 4 pages

Auxiliary Verbs

Auxiliary Verbs

Auxiliary verbs are sometimes called the helping verbs because they work with the main verb in a sentence and “help it out”. Together, the auxiliary verb and the main verb form a unit. Here are...

Linking Verbs

Linking Verbs

Linking verbs join or “link” the subject of a sentence with the rest of the sentence. They make a statement by linking things, as opposed to showing any kind of action. Common linking verbs...

Action Verbs

Action Verbs

Action verbs are the verbs you can probably identify as verbs quickly and easily. These are the words that show action, words like jump, run, and eat. There are two main classes of action...

Tenses

Tenses

Verbs can be in the present tense, present progressive tense, past tense, past progressive, present perfect, or past perfect. According to Martha Kolln, author of Rhetorical Grammar, there are two grammatical features of verbs...

Subject-Verb Agreement

Subject-Verb Agreement

“The basic rule of sentence agreement is simple: A subject must agree with its verb in number. Number means singular or plural.” (Rozakis, 2003, p. 62) The subject may be either singular or plural,...

Active Versus Passive Verbs

Active Versus Passive Verbs

As mentioned earlier, grammarian Martha Kolln mentions agency as one of the most important aspects of verb you should know about. Agency involves understanding the relationship between the subject and the verb in a...

Dialog

Dialog

Quotation Marks with Dialog You may not find yourself needing to use dialog very often in academic writing, but you may be asked to write narrative essays in some classes, which often contain dialog....

Quoting Sources

Quoting Sources

Quotation Marks with Quoted Material You should use quotation marks any time you use words directly from another source. Sometimes, students think putting a citation or reference at the end “covers it,” but you...

Single Quotes

Single Quotes

What are those single quotes for? Now that you know what quotation marks are used for, you may wonder about the single quotation marks—the one that look like ‘this.’ Single quotation marks are used...

Joining Clauses

Joining Clauses

Semicolons to Join Clauses You should use a semicolon when you’re joining two independent clauses without a connecting word. The semicolon functions, structurally, just like a period. The difference is that the semicolon between...

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