English grammar explained in plain language simple enough to be understood.
A contraction is a shortened version of two words that were bumped together. When two words get bumped together into one word, letters get knocked out and an apostrophe (‘) takes the place of the missing letters. We talked yesterday… Read more82. More Contractions
Nouns that show ownership are called possessive nouns. When you own something, you possess it. That’s why we call these possessive nouns. To show that a noun owns something, we add apostrophe -s (‘s) like this: I rode Tom’s bike…. Read more29. Possessive Nouns
In the last post, we learned about avoiding the run-on sentence. A run-on sentence happens when we run two complete thoughts together. It is important to keep each thought separate from another. Sometimes we think that we can avoid a… Read more13. Avoid the Comma Splice in Run-on Sentences
Let’s talk about why a sentence gets labeled a fragment. A fragment is a piece of something, so a sentence fragment is a piece of a sentence. A true sentence is a complete thought. With a sentence fragment, the thought… Read more11. The Sentence Fragment
A compound sentence is two complete thoughts joined together. Usually we use a comma and one of the FANBOYS to join two simple sentences into a compound sentence. You can also join two simple sentences with a semicolon. The semicolon… Read more3. The Compound Sentence with a Semicolon
Sometimes we join two simple sentences together. We call that a compound sentence. A compound sentence is two complete thoughts joined together. Use a coordinating conjunction to join two simple sentences together. The coordinating conjunctions are called FANBOYS because each… Read more2. Compound Sentences – the FANBOYS
In English, we put our thoughts into groups of words called sentences. A sentence is a complete idea. A sentence always has a subject and a verb. Subject – a person or thing doing something Verb – an action that the… Read more1. The Simple Sentence
In a sentence where someone is speaking, we use a comma to separate the quote from the speech tag. Quotation marks ( ” ” )go before and after words that are spoken or quoted. A speech tag is the phrase… Read more153. Using Commas With Quotations and Speech Tags
Yesterday we talked about using a comma at the end of a quotation, inside the quotation marks, just before the speech tag. Look at the comma in this example:“We are late for school,” said Mom. In the sentence above, We… Read more154. End Punctuation With Quotation Marks
Section A: For each sentence below, insert a comma where necessary. Some sentences may not need a comma.1. The teacher said “Take out a pencil and get ready for the test.”2. We traveled to Atlanta Georgia during spring break.3. She… Read more155. More Practice With Commas