This post explains :
- Subjects and Predicates
- Types of Sentences
- Parts of speech
- Basic rules of English grammar
Sentence correction questions need understanding of english grammar. So, lets start with the basic concepts and grammar rules.
The subject is the star of the sentence; the person, animal, or thing that is the focus of it.
The predicate will tell the action that the subject is taking or tell something about the subject.
In the following sentences the subjects are shown in red. Note how the subject is often, but not always, the first thing in the sentence.
The predicate in these sentences is shown in green. The predicate provides some information about the subject.
Ram often comes late to class.
On Saturdays I never get up before 9 o’clock.
Before giving a test the teacher should make sure that the students are well-prepared.
Once you have a general idea of the basic grammar rules for sentence structures, it is also helpful to learn about the parts of speech:
Noun:
A noun names a person, animal, place, thing, quality, idea, activity, or feeling. A noun can be singular, plural, or show possession.
Pronoun
A pronoun is a word that takes the place of a noun, like: “I”, “you”, or “they.”
Verb
A verb shows action and can be a main verb or a helping verb, like: “were” or “has.” Verbs also indicate tense and sometimes change their form to show past, present, or future tense. Linking verbs link the subject to the rest of the sentence and examples are: “appear” and “seem.”
Adjective
An adjective modifies a noun or a pronoun. It adds meaning by telling how much, which one, what kind, or describing it in other ways.
Adverb
An adverb will modify a verb and tell more about it, like how much, when, where, why, or how.
Preposition
A preposition shows a relationship between nouns or pronouns. It is often used with a noun to show location, like: “beside”, “in”, or “on”. It can also show time, direction, motion, manner, reason, or possession.
Conjunction
Conjunctions connect two words, phrases, or clauses, and common ones are: “and”, “but”, and “or.”
Interjection
Interjection shows emotion and examples are: “yea”, “hurray”, “uh-oh”, and “alas.”
Article
Articles are very useful little words that are also sometimes considered to be parts of speech.
The articles are: “a”, “an”, and “the”.
“a” and “an” are Indefinite articles and “the” is a definite article.
Simple sentence
A simple sentence contains a single subject and predicate. It describes only one thing, idea or question, and has only one verb – it contains only an independent main clause.
Any independent clause can stand alone as a sentence. It has a subject and a verb and expresses a complete thought.
For example,
Harry ran really fast.
Ron and Hermione studied at Hogwarts.
Compound sentence
A compound sentence is one comprised of two independent clauses joined using a conjunction.
Compound sentences can be divided to make two simple sentences by removing the conjunction
Example:
The sun was setting in the west and the moon was just rising.
This is compound sentence since two clauses that can stand independently are separated by “and”.
Complex sentence
Complex sentences describe more than one thing or idea and have more than one verb in them.
A complex sentence contains an independent clause(that can stand by itself) and a dependent clause(which cannot stand by itself).
An example of a complex sentence is : “I burned dinner but not the cake.”
- A singular subject needs a singular predicate.
- A sentence needs to express a complete thought.
- All sentences must start with a capital, or upper case, letter.
- Titles of people, organizations, books, magazines, movies, specific places, etc. are capitalized.
- Every sentence needs a punctuation mark at the end of it. These would include a period, exclamation mark, or question mark.
- Colons are used to separate a sentence from a list of items, between two sentences when the second one explains the first, and to introduce a long direct quote.
- Semicolons are used to take the place of a conjunction and are placed before introductory words like “therefore” or “however.” They are also used to separate a list of things if there are commas within each unit.
- There are a lot of rules for commas. The basic ones are commas separate things in a series and go wherever there is a pause in the sentence. They surround the name of a person being addressed, separate the day of the month from the year in a date, and separate a town from the state.
- Parentheses enclose things that clarify and enclose numbers and letters that are part of a list. Apostrophes are used in contractions to take the place of one or more letters and to show possession. An apostrophe and “s” is added if the noun is singular and an apostrophe alone is added if the noun is plural.
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