MEPX
Chapter 1 of 13All chapters
  1. 1Parts of speech
  2. 2Sentences and fragments
  3. 3Subject and verb agreement
  4. 4Tenses
  5. 5Lie and lay
  6. 6Pronouns
  7. 7Apostrophes
  8. 8Sound alike pairs
  9. 9Fewer and less
  10. 10Plurals
  11. 11Commas
  12. 12Other punctuation
  13. 13Active and passive

Chapter 1 of 13

Parts of speech

The eight jobs a word can do.

The main ones

Nouns name things, verbs do things, adjectives describe nouns and adverbs describe verbs. Pronouns stand in for nouns, prepositions place things, conjunctions join and determiners point.

  • In "she quickly closed the laptop", quickly is the adverb: it says how the closing happened.
  • The same word can change job: run is a verb in "I run" and a noun in "a run".

Why it helps

Most grammar rules are stated in these terms, so knowing the labels turns an advice line like "do not split an infinitive" into something you can actually check.