Parts of Speech, Grammar and Mechanics

Any time you write, whether it be something short like a sentence or something long like an essay, you should use what you already know about good grammar and mechanics. As you learn more about the topics, incorporate these new learnings into your writing.

Use the drop-down boxes below to learn more about these topics.

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Parts of Speech

Nouns

Verbs

Adjectives and Adverbs

Conjunctions

Prepositions and Articles

Grammar

Grammar Handouts and Exercises at Chomp Chomp: Grammar Bytes

Subject-Verb Agreement: Subjects must agree with their verbs in number. You wouldn't say "Bobby are very nice" because the subject Bobby is a singular noun but the verb are is supposed to be used with plural nouns.

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Parallel Structure: When listing items in a sentence using a conjunction, the items in the list need to be structured using the same parts of speech. You wouldn't say "I enjoy writing stories, playing with my dogs, and hiked a mountain" because hiked is a past tense verb but writing and playing are -ing verbs.

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Sentence Fragments: Sentence fragments are missing either a subject, a predicate or both. "Likes coffee" is a sentence fragment because it is missing a subject who likes the coffee.

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Run-on Sentences and Comma Splices: Run-ons and comma splices are both sentence errors. A run-on is when two or more sentences are joined together with no end punctuation or with too many conjunctions. A comma splice is when two sentences are joined together with a comma instead of an end punctuation. To fix these errors, do one of the following: 1) Use end punctuation and a capital letter; 2) Use a semi-colon and no capital letter; 3) Use a comma and a coordinating conjunction.

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