Grammar 101: Building a Foundation for Great Writing with Grammar Basics

While many of these grammar rules are made to be broken, having a basic awareness and command of grammar in your writing is of vital importance: With the right understanding and approach, you can help ensure that you present your best self on the page—you can make sure that your best ideas are clearly presented and understood by whoever reads them.

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Word processing features like spelling and grammar checkers can make it easy to spot simple errors in our writing. And AI-powered digital writing assistants like Microsoft Editor and Grammarly with more advanced features and capabilities can make it even easier to ensure that your writing is clear, error-free, and the best that it can be. But being armed with a range of in-depth grammatical knowledge can still be a huge help for which there’s no real substitute. Not only will you be able to able to pick out potential mistakes on your own, but you’ll have a better sense of all the tools available to you to get your best ideas across.

At the end of the day, gaining grammar knowledge is all about expanding that tool set. Because great writers aren’t just creative thinkers and communicators; they’re also master technicians who are highly conscious of how to structure and control their words on the page—whether that’s in emails or letters, resumes or reports.

So to jumpstart your journey toward mastery, we’ve covered some of the grammar basics that will get you on your way.

Basic Grammar Concepts: Parts of Speech

To start expanding your grammar knowledge, it’s helpful to begin with an understanding of the eight traditional parts of speech that make up our sentences: nouns, pronouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, prepositions, interjections, and conjunctions. Each of these parts of speech has a distinct role to play in how we communicate, and a grasp of their basic definition and function will serve you well in any future grammar lessons.

Nouns: The people, places, things, or ideas we refer to in our writing and speech. Nouns can refer to concrete, unique things as well as abstract concepts.

Examples: accountant, New York, boredom, Tom Hanks

While there a number of ways to classify all the kinds of the people, places, and things that we refer to in language, nouns can broadly be broken down into categories:

• Common nouns: any general term for a class of people, places, things, or ideas. Common nouns are never capitalized.
  • Examples: woman, car, city, mountain, book

• Proper nouns: unique or specific people, places, things, or ideas that are always capitalized.
  • Examples: Alice, Ford Edsel, Beijing, Denali, Moby Dick

Pronouns: Words that take the place of any nouns in a sentence.

Examples: I, me, my, she, he, they, we, who, yours, them

Verbs: Words that express actions or states of being. Verbs typically indicate what the subject (or main noun) in a sentence is doing or feeling.

Examples: I wrote a sentence. I called my mother. I will walk my dog. I am happy.

Adjectives: Adjectives provide description in our sentences. Crucially, though, they specifically identify, modify, or describe a noun.

Examples: I wrote a beautiful sentence. I called my wonderful mother. I will walk my restless dog. I am happy.

Adverbs: Adverbs also add description to our sentences. However, what distinguishes them from adjectives is that they describe verbs—instead of characterizing a person, place, or thing, adverbs provide information about when, where, why, and how something is done.

Examples: I carefully wrote a sentence. I finally called my mother. Importantly, I walked my dog. I am very happy.

Prepositions: These words link information about the time, location, or logical relationship of one noun to another word in a given sentence. Importantly, they tell us things like when or where one thing is among other things.

Examples: I wrote a sentence in a Word document. I called my mother on her birthday. I walked my dog around the park.

Interjections: Often followed by exclamation points, these are words or expressions that convey emotions.

Examples: Oops! There’s an error in that sentence. Oh, gosh! I forgot to call my mother.

Conjunctions: These words (like and, but, and or) connect words, concepts, parts of sentences, and even whole sentences.

Examples: I wanted to call my mother. However, I ran out of time today. I will make it up to her and call sometime tomorrow.

Identifying Parts of Speech

Once you’ve got these basic grammar concepts down, you’ll be on your way to becoming an expert. Of course, you’ll need to not just be able to know what distinguishes these parts of speech but also identify them in a given sentence. To help, here a few tips to identifying certain parts of speech based on their suffixes—that is, based on the letters that come at the end of the word:

Nouns: -ance (insurance); -dom (freedom); -ence (persistence); -er (trainer); -or (editor); -ism (modernism); -ist (scientist); -ity (responsibility); -ness (happiness); -ship (championship)

Verbs: -ate (indicate); -ify (specify); -ize (specialize). While you’ll have to look more closely at these words to know their part of speech, verbs can also end in -s (she walks), -ed (she walked), and -n or -en (she has fallen; her offer was withdrawn).

Adjectives: -able (comfortable); -al (temporal); -ible (terrible); -esque (picturesque); -ful (beautiful); -ic (drastic); -ish (selfish); -ive (apprehensive); -ous (gorgeous); -less (careless); -y (creamy).

Adverbs: -ly (carefully). While many adverbs end in -ly, there are exceptions to watch out for: Anytime you add -ly to an adjective it creates an adverb. However, adding –ly to a noun produces an adjective (brotherly, cowardly).

Beginning Grammar: Sentence Components and Verb Tenses

Sentence Components

In English grammar, sentences are composed of two principal parts: the subject and the predicate. In simple terms, the subject is who or what the sentence is about. Meanwhile, the predicate contains information about the subject.

Example Sentence: The city of Chicago is a beautiful place to visit.

• Subject: The city of Chicago
• Predicate: is a beautiful place to visit.

Almost all sentences will include both of these parts, although there are some exceptions. For instance, an in imperative sentence (one that communicates a command or demand) typically omits the subject of the sentence (usually you) because it is understood or implied, as in: Pass the butter, please. or Give me a break! or Do not pass Go, do not collect $200.

Verb Tenses

One other helpful tool to kick start your grammar learning journey is a basic understanding of verb tenses. In short, verb tense refers to when the action a verb describes occurs. While each of these breaks down into further, more specific classifications, that’s a more advanced lesson for another day. For now, you can get through Grammar 101 with a simple understanding of the three main verb tenses:

Past: Past tense verbs describe something that has already happened

Example: I ran a marathon.

Present: The present tense describes things that are happening currently or continuously.

Example: I am running a marathon. I run marathons.

Future: Future tense verbs describe an action that has not happened yet or will happen.

Example: I will run a marathon next year.

Continuing On: Beyond Basic Grammar

All this information, of course, just scratches the surface. Grammar is ultimately a limitless pursuit, and one which evolves along with any language over time—just as your understanding and mastery of it will as you keep reading and writing.

But this lesson in Grammar 101 should still serve you well as you look to improve your own writing skills. Whatever you’re writing and wherever you’re writing it—whether it’s in Google Docs or Microsoft Word—you can take these basic English grammar concepts and terms and build on them.

More importantly, you can build your confidence and start to move on to the nitty-gritty aspects of not just grammar but what makes great writing truly great, taking each lesson back with you every time you explore your brightest ideas on the page.