Ultimate Writing Guide 1:2 - Grammar

The Ultimate Writing Guide

Chapter 1:2 - Grammar

What you'll find in this area of the guide is developing you and why you want to write and the skills you'll need to do it. One of the best ways you can improve your writing offhand is to read a lot of books, especially books that are of the genre you would like to write yourself.

In this part of Chapter 1, you will find out:
Nouns
Verbs
Adjectives
Adverbs

There will also be:
Examples
Proper terms
Writing prompts to practice with

Nouns

Nouns are common knowledge, after all, we are nouns. Generally speaking a noun is a person, place or thing. However, I bet you didn't know that there were more to nouns than just the word 'noun' and if you did I bet you don't know all of them.

Now nouns are very important when you come to writing, most of the things included in your story will be a noun! There are different types of nouns as stated above.

They are as followed:
Common Nouns
Proper Nouns
Collective Nouns
Compound Nouns
Pronouns
Verbal Nouns

I bet you're already sick of hearing the word noun, right? Don't worry, it all becomes common knowledge eventually I assure you. First we're going to look at what sort of nouns belong where, and then we're going to look at something more complex before giving you your optional writing exercise!

First - Common Nouns. Now a common now is basically things such as a plant, a cat, a car, a road, a man, a tree, a building. We could go on for hours naming random things and more than likely, they'll be a common noun! That's why they're 'common'. Try and identify about 5-10 things in your room and I bet you they'll be common nouns. Here's what I see: a hat, a book, a laptop, a bag, a desk, a chair, a TV, a cup and a window. Obviously there are more things in my room, but you get the drift. They're all common nouns! You're surrounded by them!

Next - Proper Nouns. You are a proper noun; at least your name is! The name Ben is a proper noun, so is the name Jane. Australia is a proper noun, as is the month February. Now, there's sometimes a mix up with some common nouns and some proper nouns. An aunt is common whereas Aunt Jo is a proper noun. The aunt in the second example becomes proper because it is part of Jo's name. The same with Uncle Bill, or if talking about a priest, Father Tony. The Pope is also a proper noun! Things with proper nouns are usually of importance and significance.

Next - Collective Nouns. A collective noun is something that joins people or things together. So the words choir, team and jury are collective nouns as they are 'collecting' a group of people together. This also applies to animals! Such as when you see a pack of wolves, the word pack is a collective noun. Anything that brings two or more people together is a collective noun.

Next - Compound Nouns. These are words joined together usually by a hyphen. Have any of you ever played Harvest Moon? Well, if you haven't, there's a place in one of them called Forget-me-not Valley. The noun Forget-me-not is a compound now as it's compounding a bunch of words together into one. Another example? Father-in-law is also a compound noun as it is using hyphens to join the words into one. A word like boardroom or manservant would be another example of a compound noun without the hyphens but more common than not, compound nouns use hyphens. It's the easiest way to spot them.

Next - Pronouns. A pronoun usually replaces other types of nouns. For example: 'Hannah woke up late for school. In a hurry, she rushed to get dressed'. The pronoun 'she' replaces the proper noun 'Hannah' in the second part of the sentence. This is to avoid you repeating the name over and over and thus you are more likely to find pronouns in a book than proper nouns! Especially when writing in first person. I, she, he, they, it, we - they are all pronouns!

Finally - Verbal Nouns. Take a word like play - play is a common noun, we should all know this by now! Now, when you add '-ing' to the end of play, you get playing. So let's take playing and put it into a simple sentence such as 'I like playing'. You have just created a verbal noun! It'd be improper to say things such as 'I like play' so to structure speech properly, we use verbal nouns to replace the awkward common noun, which makes 'I like playing'.

Now we've been over the types of nouns, lets look at them in more detail. By now you should know a common noun does NOT have a capital letter - those are proper nouns. However, let's say you have some secret society known as the Order. In this case, the common noun Order would become a proper noun as it becomes important. However, in a normal sentence such as 'he was Ordered to do something', you would not capitalize the O in the noun.

The same is said for when talking about something of importance. Let's use the Tower of London. Calling it the Tower Of London is incorrect - tower in this case becomes proper because it holds importance and London is a proper noun by default. 'Of' is still a common noun and thus should remain without a capital letter.

So now - is the noun singular or plural? Let's use the sentence 'The man was left alone'. In this, the common noun 'man' is a singular noun as it's talking about one man. Let's change it to 'The men were left alone'. The common noun 'men' make the sentence plural. When a noun talks about one person, place or thing, it is a singular noun. When a noun talks about two or more people, places or things, it's plural.

WRITING EXERCISE

Common Nouns - Create a sentence using the common nouns bag, desk, shoulder, window and woman.

Proper Nouns - Create a sentence using the proper nouns Lewis, London and Aunt Margret.

Collective Nouns - Create a sentence using collective nouns when talking about a certain group of animals that are NOT wolves.

Compound Nouns - Create a sentence using one or more compound nouns that were not used in the example above.

Pronouns - Create a small paragraph using as many Pronouns as you can. Try to not use proper nouns and common nouns more than once.

Verbal Nouns - Create a few sentences in which you would using the verbal nouns talking, brewing, looking, standing and shooting.

Verbs

So you thought nouns were hard? Welcome to verbs! By now you should be pretty familiar with nouns and how they work, so let's get going on verbs. Verbs are a little harder to understand and get a hold of but once you get the hang of them they'll be easy.

Now a verb for those of you who are unaware, is something that describes an action or a state or something that occurs. More or less, it's a doing word. Now that you're familiar with what a verb generally is we'll move onto the different types of verbs. Now, there are ten types of verbs, but we're going to categorize them into five different verbs. This is because one type of verb usually has another type that is its opposite, thus it'd be best to explain them in one.

The types of verbs are:
Auxiliary and Lexical Verbs
Dynamic and Stative Verbs
Finite and Non-finite Verbs
Regular and Irregular Verbs
Transitive and Intransitive Verbs

Some of these are pretty self explanatory but we will still be going over them.

First - Auxiliary and Lexical Verbs. An auxiliary verb is known as a helping verb, or a verb that determines something. '"She will have a baby boy," the doctor said', the word 'will' here is an auxiliary verb as it determines the mood or tense. A lexical verb is a verb that isn't auxiliary. So instead of the doctor saying '"She will have a baby boy"', the doctor would say '"She had a baby boy"'. The verb 'had' here is lexical as it is definite and full if you will and conveys a real meaning.

Next - Dynamic and Stative Verbs. Most verbs are either dynamic or stative and there's an easy way to spot it. A dynamic verb is something that's happening now, it's doing it at this moment in time, thus it's active. Saying 'The car drove fast' is a use of a dynamic verb. Can you spot it? Yup! The verb 'drove' is dynamic. Stative verbs work a bit differently. By changing the sentence and saying 'The car was driving fast' you will make the sentence inactive. This is because verb 'was' makes it stative as it's not happening now, but it was happening.

Next - Finite and Non-finite Verbs. An example of a finite verb would be 'He walked down the street'. The verb 'walked' has an end to it, therefore making it finite. So words such as talked, played and cried are all finite verbs. Now if we change the sentence to 'He was walking down the street' the sentence becomes non-finite, or infinite because he could continue walking forever - we don't know. So talking, playing and crying are non-finite verbs!

Next - Regular and Irregular Verbs. A regular verb will add either 'd', 'ed' or on occasions 't' to the end of a word in order to make the verb regular. Like before with verbal nouns, we're going to use the same example. Saying 'She have eggs for breakfast' sounds wrong, so we drop the 've' on the end of have and add a 'd' on the end. This makes the sentence 'She had eggs for breakfast'. Now, an irregular verb doesn't do that. An example of an irregular verb doesn't do that. To use an irregular noun in that sentence would be saying 'She ate eggs for breakfast'.

Finally - Transitive and Intransitive Verbs. A transitive verb is a verb that is direct and usually followed by a direct object. So for example, the sentence 'He sells bacon' would be a use of a transitive verb. An intransitive verb would be 'He sat there'. These can be tricky to spot as they are very similar to one another.

Have you noticed anything about the verbs? In reality - they're all the same!

WRITING EXERCISE

Auxiliary and Lexical Verbs - Create one sentence using an auxiliary verb and one sentence using a lexical verb that is NOT the same as the one in the example.

Dynamic and Stative Verbs - Create one sentence using a dynamic verb and one sentence using a stative verb that is NOT the same as the one in the example.

Finite and Non-finite Verbs - Create one sentence using a finite verb and one sentence using a non-infinite verb that is NOT the same as the one in the example.

Regular and Irregular Verbs - Create one sentence using a regular verb and one sentence using an irregular verb that is NOT the same as the one in the example.

Transitive and Intransitive Verbs - Create one sentence using a transitive verb and one sentence using an intransitive verb that is NOT the same as the one in the example.

Adjective

Now adjectives work a bit differently. Adjectives are describing words - so saying 'She is very tired' would be the use of an adjective. You're describing how tired she's feeling. However, it's important to note that adjectives modify sentences and you should NEVER overuse them. It's nice to have a few adjectives here and there in a sentence, however, using too many can bore a reader.

Possessive Adjectives are adjectives that describe something that belongs to you or someone. So 'That is my chocolate bar!' is a use of a possessive adjective (and it's also an exclamatory sentence). A Personal Adjective gives people a title, so Lord, Mrs, Queen, Dr are all personal adjectives.

WRITING EXERCISE

Try creating a paragraph filled with adjectives and then create a separate paragraph and try to use a maximum of three adjectives in that paragraph.

Adverbs

Are often confused with adjectives. Now an adverb is adding on something to a verb. So saying 'I stumbled as I walked' would be the use of an adverb. You should always try and avoid using the word 'as' a lot when writing for an older audience, just a small tip.

Another example of an adverb would be 'She listened carefully', here we are describing how she listened. She could've well just listened, but instead she listened carefully. An adverbs main use is to modify a verb to add more to its meaning to give the word more expression, so a lot of the adverbs you see will end in 'ly'. However, some other adverbs, such as fast, less and very to name a few, are adverbs that do not have 'ly' added onto them.

WRITING EXERCISE

Create a paragraph or sentence if you prefer using adverbs that do NOT end in 'ly' and have not been mentioned in the examples above.

Create a paragraph or sentence if you prefer using adverbs that DO end in 'ly' and have not been mentioned in the examples above.

Next time we will be going over how to avoid the cliché when writing as well as covering the three different tenses you can write in along with the different points of views.