Adjectival noun: An adjective used as a noun (the young).
Adjective: Describes or qualifies a noun (a big firm).
Adverb: A word that qualifies or modifies a verb (drove quickly), an adjective (terribly bad) or another adverb (very sadly). Care needed in use and positioning. See later entry for split infinitive.
Apostrophe: A mark to indicate the possessive case (the firm’s staff, men’s shirts) and the omission of a letter or letters (shan’t, can’t), or contractions of words (’phone).
Article: Definite article is the name for the; indefinite for a and an.
Bracket: Paired typographical marks to denote word(s), phrase or sentence in parenthesis, usually round ( ). Square brackets [ ] denote words inserted by someone other than the author.
Case: The role of a noun or noun phrase in relation to other words in a clause or sentence (in the boy’s knees, boy is in the genitive case; similarly boy is in singular case, boys plural).
Clause: Part of a complex sentence usually with its own subject and verb; three main types – nominal clause when functioning like a noun phrase (the name of the game); relative clause like an adjective (the man you love); or adverbial (don’t do it unless you’re sure).
Inferior to a sentence, superior to a phrase.
Collective noun: A noun referring to a group of people or animals (audience, committee, family, herd, staff, team, majority, parliament, the clergy, the public). Whether it takes a plural or singular verb depends on whether the group is considered as a single unit or as a collection of individuals (the audience was in its place but were clapping madly, the family is large; the board is meeting, but are going out to lunch).
Conjunction: A connecting word to join two clauses, or words in the same clause (and, but, or); also for introducing a subordinate clause (although, because, since).
Consonants: Letters of the alphabet other than the vowels a, e, i, o, u.
Count nouns: Nouns that can be used with numerical values (book/books), that can form a plural or be used with an indefinite article and usually refer to objects (table, ship, pen) as distinct from non-count nouns (adolescence, richness, scaffolding).
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Dangling participle: Also called hanging participle, or dangler; a participle clause usually contains no subject and is unattached to the subject of the main clause. Considered ungrammatical rather than a style fault. (Now broken, Fred Jones can remember what the teacup looked like. Clearly, Mr Jones was not broken even though his memory was perfect.)
Determiners: Words that precede nouns to limit their meaning in some way (all, both, this, every).
Double negative: Two negative words in a sentence can confuse the reader. (I haven’t got nothing; I wouldn’t be surprised if they didn’t come.)
Elision: Omission of speech sound or syllable as in wrong, listen, hymn. In each example the elided character is italicized.
Ellipsis: Omission of word or words from speech or writing usually recoverable from the context; useful in formal contexts for avoiding repetition. (We are as keen to help as you are.) Ellipsis of to help avoids duplication, aids flow and sharpens style.
First person: Pronouns and determiners denoting the speaker or writer in contrast to the addressee or others. (I, me, myself, my, mine in the singular; we, us, ourselves, our, ours in the plural.)
Gender: Nouns and pronouns representing natural distinctions of sex. The masculine gender denotes persons and animals that are male; feminine, those that are female.
Genitive: The case of nouns and pronouns indicating possession of something or close association of something (possessive case, the cat’s paws).
Gerund: The -ing part of a verb when used in a partly noun-like way as in No parking as opposed to the -ing as used in a participle ending, everyone was parking. Sometimes called a verbal noun.
Headlinese: The grammar of newspaper headlines where articles and other words are omitted for reasons of space and where present tense verbs are used for past events (soldier shoots terrorists).
Hyphen: Mark to join words or to indicate word division, to separate figures or groups of figures. Many uses: in compound
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as in a two-page report; with a prefix as in the votes have been re-counted.
Idiom: An expression with a meaning that cannot be guessed from the meaning of the individual words as in ‘his mother passed away (died) this morning’. A peculiarity of expression or phraseology in language (over the moon, under the weather) which sounds natural to those born and bred in England, but incomprehensible to foreigners.
Indirect question: A question as reported in indirect speech. (I asked when he could attend the meeting.)
Infinitive: The form of a verb when used without direct relationship to time, person or number, often preceded by to. (I wanted to laugh.) See entry for split infinitive.
Interrogative: A word or sentence used to ask a question. (What do you do?)
Mass noun: Never takes the indefinite article a and seldom has a plural (bread, capitalism, clothing, dust, equipment, leisure, traffic).
Modal verbs: Auxiliary verbs to express mood (can/could, may/might, shall/should, will/would, must).
Modifier: Words which modify other words: very + badly (adverb);
really + useful (adjective).
Noun: The name of a person, place or thing whether material or immaterial, abstract or concrete. Inflects for plural and functions as subject or object of a sentence. Common nouns (cat/car) are distinct from proper nouns or names (names of people, cities, months, days of the week and which carry a capital initial letter).
Number: Contrasts between singular and plural; in nouns (girl/girls), pronouns (she/they), verbs (says/say; was/were).
Object: The object of a sentence follows a verb and is normally a noun or noun phrase (the car hit the wall; the car hit the wall, bricks and all).
Paragraph: A short passage in text, at the start of a fresh line of thought, sometimes (but not always) indented. A unit of thought, not of length.
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Parenthesis: A word, clause or sentence inserted as an afterthought and marked off with brackets, commas or dashes as in ‘This is a useful book (it should be kept for reference).’ Plural parentheses.
Participle: A form of the verb normally ending in -ing or -ed. Present participle (being, doing/is going/looking); past participle (been/done/
has gone/looked).
Passive voice: Where the object of the sentence ‘receives’ the action of the verb (fast drivers will be prosecuted). Only transitive verbs can have passive forms. See entry for verbs.
Person: Classifies whether pronouns and verbs indicate the speaker, the addressee or a third party as first, second or third person, singular or plural. (First person: I am/we are going to the theatre; second: you are going to the theatre; third: he/they are going to the theatre.)
Phrase: A short expression, a group of words of lesser weight than a clause forming a unit in itself; part of a sentence that is not the subject (I refuse to do it).
Plural: More than one (cats and dogs, but sheep and deer).
Possessive: A word or case indicating possession or ownership; the possessive case of nouns is also called the genitive case (John’s hands, girls’ fingers).
Predicate: That part of a sentence that is not subject (I decided what to do).
Preposition: Words that relate word sets to each other and that generally precede the words they govern. Usually short words (by, in, for, to, out, up). Traditional prejudice against ending a sentence with a preposition is now fading, especially for informal contexts.
Pronoun: A word that replaces or stands for a noun without naming a person or thing already known from the context (I/you/they asked a question), and sometimes replaces a clause as in Why did you ask that?
Proper noun: A noun referring to a particular person, place, month, day of week, etc and carrying a capital initial letter (Smith, London, March, Monday).
Second person: Denotes the person addressed as distinct from the
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Sentence: The largest unit in traditional grammar; a set of words complete in itself containing subject and predicate (all that part that is not the subject). Usually contains a verb; starts with a capital letter and ends with a full stop, and also with question or exclama-tion mark, as in ‘The client heard a presentaexclama-tion.’ Here the client is the subject, heard the verb and presentation the object.
Singular: A word or form referring to a single person or thing.
Split infinitive: Where an adverb is placed between to and the infinitive form of a verb (to boldly go). Nowadays it’s considered a myth that to must never be detached from the verb. Generally, it is better not to split but avoidance can sometimes cause awkward constructions. (‘Do you want to really help them?’ is preferable to putting really before to, impossible after help.)
Subject: That part of the sentence which usually comes first and governs the verb, often defined as the ‘doer’ of the verbal action.
See entry above for sentence.
Syllable: Unit of pronunciation; a word or part of a word uttered with a single pulse of the voice and usually containing one vowel sound with or without consonant(s) preceding or following it.
Pro/nun/ci/a/tion has five syllables.
Synonym: A word or phrase having the same meaning (or virtually the same) as another. Some synonyms for care are (nouns) anxiety, caution, charge, burden; (verbs) be anxious, be disposed, have regard.
Tense: A form taken by the verb in a sentence to indicate the time at which the action is viewed as occurring. Past (something that has happened), present (is happening) and future (will happen) tenses. In media usage, present tenses can refer to the past (PRO resigns).
Third person: Denotes the person or persons spoken or written about as distinct from the addressee, speaker or writer (he, him, they, theirs, etc).
Verb: The core of a sentence or clause, the ‘doing’ or ‘action’ word.
Major types are transitive, intransitive, auxiliary. Using a transitive verb, the meaning passes from subject to the object of the sentence (he built the house); using an intransitive verb the meaning is complete without the addition of an object (she laughs). Auxiliary verbs form tenses, moods and voices of other verbs (be, do, have) and modals (may, might, etc). Verbless, or incomplete, sentences are
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common in sports commentaries and in broadcasting (And now the news).
Voice: Mode of inflecting verbs as being active or passive (the cat ate the food; the food was eaten by the cat).
Vowels: Letters of the alphabet producing simple vocal sound by continuous passage of breath (a, e, i, o, u). All English words contain at least one vowel.
Note: Source material for Appendices 1 and 2 has been drawn largely from the 1994 edition of the Oxford Dictionary of English Grammar and from the 1974 edition of the Concise Oxford Dictionary by permission of the Oxford University Press.
Appendix 1