Parts of Speech and Parts of a Sentence

But first ... some thoughts on the mechanics of editing:

What is a comma but a claw rending the sheet, the asthmatic's gasp? What is a question mark but what's needed to complete this thought? Punctuation: What is it, after all, but another way of cutting up time, creating or negating relationships, telling words when to take a rest, when to get on with their relentless stories, when to catch their breath? (And you -- you are breathing, are you not, in the same rhythm that creates words?)
Karen Elizabeth Gordon, The Well-Tempered Sentence
As mass communicators, we are guardians of our language. What we write and broadcast, and how we craft our messages, can have profound effects on our readers and viewers. If we use a word incorrectly, misspell it or commit a grammatical error, our mistake is magnified by the vast reach of our medium. Our mistakes can -- and have -- become gospel for our audience. Because we have the power to corrupt language, we have the responsibility to uphold its worthy conventions.
Lauren Kessler / Duncan McDonald, When Words Collide
Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts. This requires not that the writer make all his sentences short, or that he avoid all detail and treat his subjects only in outline, but that every word tell.
William Strunk Jr. / E.B. White, The Elements of Style

Besides, there are matters of ...

* Consistency. Inconsistency undermines credibility.

* Productive work flow for you, the editor. You don't want questions about mechanics to bog you down. Proper language use should become automatic.

* A consensus about what words mean. Readers must be able to understand a writer's intended meaning.

By the way, a lot of you are interested in working in public relations. Here is some information from a survey of top PR executives at each Fortune 250 company, plus 75 other PR executives from smaller firms. (Survey conducted by John E. Guniven of the U of Nebraska and published in 1998.)

Good writing skills are ranked No. 1 among skills a person entering the PR field needs.

* Very important: 189
* Somewhat important: 3
* Not very important: 0
* Unimportant: 0


FYI, Nos. 2, 3 and 4:
* Good oral communication skills.
* Understanding of organizational strategy, goals, objectives and mission.
* Understanding of financial statements.

When asked to grade new PR professionals' writing skills, the executives said ...

* A: 5.7 percent
* B: 37.5 percent
* C: 40.1 percent
* D: 15.6 percent
* F: 2 percent

English grammar is based on Latin. So here are some useful phrases before we start ...

Canis meus id comedit.
My dog ate it..

Utinam barbari spatium proprium tuum invadant.
May barbarians invade your personal space.
Re vera, potas bene.
Say, you sure are drinking a lot.
Recedite, plebes! Gero rem imperialem.
Stand aside, plebians! I am on imperial business.
Fac ut vivas.
Get a life.

There are eight parts of speech:

Nouns
Name people, places, things and ideas
Examples: book, ethics, Iowa, Jane, Spanish

Pronouns
Substitute for nouns (people, places, things and ideas)
Examples : I, its, someone, yours
Verbs
Express action or states of being
Examples: edit, is, had written, would have been
Adjectives
Describe nouns or pronouns
Examples: blue, good, smooth, unique
Adverbs
Describe anything else, including verbs, adjectives, other adverbs or even whole sentences
Examples: frankly, smoothly, well
Prepositions
Show a relationship between a noun or pronoun and other words in a sentence
Examples: after, of, to, with
Conjunctions
Connect words, phrases, clauses or sentences
Examples: although, and, because, but, either/or
Interjections
Exclamatory words (rarely used in journalistic writing)
Examples: darn, holy cow, wow

Then there are parts of a sentence. (There are others, but these are the basic ones.)

Subject
The noun or pronoun that does the acting or the being.

Predicate
Fancy term for a verb, as it is used in a sentence.

Object
The noun or pronoun that is on the receiving end of an action. There are many kinds of objects, including:

* Direct objects tell us "whom" or "what."
Example: I (subject) hate (predicate) grammar (d.o.)

* Indirect objects are the people or things to whom or to which (or for whom/which) something is done.
Example: Grammar (subject) gives (predicate) me (i.o.) a headache (d.o.).

* Objects of prepositions are nouns or pronouns that follow a preposition in a sentence.
Example: Grammar (subject) causes (predicate) intense pounding (d.o.) in my head (prepositional phrase, in which "head" is the object of the preposition "in").

Words can be combined into phrases, clauses or sentences.

Words
Each word is itself a part of a sentence, of course.

Phrases
Groups of related words that are missing either a subject
(a doer) or a verb (an action or state of being) or both.
Examples:
* in the classroom (prepositional phrase)
* playing Texas Hold 'Em (gerund phrase)

Clauses
Groups of related words that have both a subject and a verb.

Independent clauses can stand alone as a complete sentence.

Dependent clauses cannot stand alone.

Example:
The prospect of getting a job scares me (independent clause) because I hear horror stories about the job market (dependent clause introduced by subordinate conjunction, "because").

Sentences
The simplest sentence has one independent clause.

Example:
I am sleepy.

More complex sentences can have multiple independent clauses (called a compound sentence); one independent clause plus one or more dependent clauses (a complex sentence); or two or more independent clauses plus one or more dependent clauses (a compound-complex sentence).
Examples:
* I am sleepy, and I am going to take a nap (compound).
* I am sleepy because I stayed up late last night (complex).
* I am sleepy, and I am going to take a nap until my roommate wakes me up (compound-complex).

Can you identify the parts of speech and the key parts of each sentence? (This excerpt is adapted from a book titled Technopoly, by Neil Postman.)

First, identify all the verbs in this sentence.
What is the subject, the predicate(s), the object(s)?

Ideology can be defined as a set of barely recognized assumptions that direct our efforts to give shape and coherence to the world.

Identify all the pronouns in this sentence.
Subject, predicate(s), object(s)?

If we accept this as a definition, then the technology of language must be seen as our most powerful ideological instrument although its potency is seldom recognized.

Identify all the prepositions in this sentence.
Subject, predicate(s), object(s)?

Language instructs us not only about the names of things but also about which things can be named; because of language, our world is divided into subjects and objects, processes and things.

Identify all the nouns in this sentence.
Subject, predicate(s), object(s)?

It tells us about time, space and number, and it forms our ideas of how we stand in relation to nature and to each other.

Identify all the adverbs in this sentence.
Subject, predicate(s), object(s)?

For example, English grammar is rather aggressive, often making life very difficult for those of us who would much prefer to think of the world as primarily benign.

Identify all the conjunctions in this sentence.
Subject, predicate(s), object(s)?

There are always subjects who act, verbs that are their actions and objects that are acted upon; although most of us, most of the time, are unaware of how either language or ideology does its work, we are obliged to know the world as made up of things pushing against -- and often attacking -- one another.

Identify all the adjectives in these sentences.
Subject, predicate(s), object(s)?

It's scary to think we live so deep within the boundaries of our linguistic assumptions that we have little sense of how the world looks to those who speak a different tongue. To put it simply, the language is a crucial bit of machinery, with an ideological agenda that is hidden from our everyday view.

Want to try all the parts of speech in this sentence?

We believe language to be a direct, unedited, unbiased and apolitical expression of the way our world really is; however, it actually functions like any other piece of technology, available for human manipulation.