Missouri State University-West Plains

Skip to content Skip to navigation
a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z

Writing Lab

Your source for writing help.

  • About the Lab and Resources
  • About Online Tutoring
  • Writing Process
    • Common Errors in Writing
    • Drafting and Revising
    • MLA Parenthetical Citations
    • Outlines
    • Paragraph Development and Thesis
    • Peer Editing Guidelines
    • Plagiarism
    • Prewriting
    • Proofreading
    • Synthesis
    • Transitions
  • Rhetoric
    • Argument
    • Cause and Effect
    • Classification
    • Compare and Contrast
    • Critical or Literary Analysis
    • Definition
    • Description
    • Evaluation
    • Explaining a Concept
    • In-Class Writing
    • Narrative
    • Process Analysis
    • Problem Solution
    • Summary
  • Grammar
    • Active and Passive Voice
    • Adjectives & Adverbs
    • Commonly Confused Words
    • Dependent and Independent Clauses
    • Fragments
    • Nouns and Verbs
    • Perspective Shifts
    • Prepositions
    • Pronouns
    • Run-ons/Comma Splices
    • Sentence Variety
    • Subject/Verb Agreement
    • Verb Tenses
    • Wordiness
  • Mechanics
    • Abbreviations
    • Capitalization
    • Hyphen
    • Numbers
    • Special Print
    • Spelling
  • Punctuation
    • Apostrophe
    • Colon
    • Comma
    • End Punctuation
    • Quotation Marks
    • Semicolon
  • Other
    • BMS Lab Reports
  • Grizzly Tutoring Lab Home
You are here: Home / Grammar / Nouns and Verbs

Nouns and Verbs

Nouns

Nouns answer questions like “What is it?” and “Who is it?”
Nouns name things, people, places, and ideas: purses, gymnasts, theater, and democracy.
In some languages, like Spanish and Italian, nouns have gender. English, on the other hand, sometimes shows gender by changing the form of certain words.

Feminine Masculine Feminine Masculine
wife husband actress actor
woman man widow widower
mother father waitress waiter
aunt uncle princess prince
girl boy heroine hero

Many nouns are not gender specific, meaning that the word could apply to men and to women. (Teacher, parent, doctor, friend, teenager, student, cook, cousin, engineer, and lawyer are examples.) If it is important for your audience to know the sex of your subject, you can clarify by writing, “The male cook made tortillas.”

What are common nouns?

Common nouns are nouns that are not proper nouns.

So what are proper nouns?

Proper nouns are capitalized. Why? Proper nouns are specific names or titles. For example, instead of saying, “The girl went on vacation,” I could say, “Mary traveled to Florida.” In English, proper nouns are used for names (of people, streets, countries, cities, bodies of water, etc.), titles of people, titles of books, months of the year, days of the week, holidays, and adjectives relating to nationality nouns.
What needs to be capitalized in the following sentences?
o   janice read the red tent on saturday.
o   In december, we celebrate christmas.
o   The boy likes chinese food and french music.

Then what is a pronoun?

Pronouns take the place of nouns. They often replace proper nouns to add variety to our writing. For example, if you are writing a story about your brother (John), you do not want to write “John did this. John did that. John knew better.” Instead, you can write, “John broke the vase, and then he hid in his room.” The noun that the pronoun replaces is called the antecedent. Find the antecedent in the following sentences:
o   Mary is a nurse. She works at Mercy Hospital.
o   Ben is a teacher; he works at MSU.
o   The students played basketball, and then they ate pizza.

Some pronouns to remember: I, me, my, mine, you, your, yours, he, him, his, she, her, hers, it, its, we, us, our, ours, they, them, their, theirs, myself, yourself, himself, herself, itself, oneself, ourselves, yourselves, and themselves.

What is the difference between “he” and “him”—aside from the spelling?

He is the subject of the sentence, and “him” is used as a direct object.

What is a direct object?

Every sentence in English must have a subject and a verb. The subject is the person or thing doing the action. The direct object is the person or thing receiving the action.
o   Beth sings a song.
o   Jeremy made a cake.
o   Steve painted the house.

What are countable and uncountable nouns?

Countable nouns can be counted.
Examples include cat, store, idea, and pen.
I have two cats. We went to eight stores. Julie had several good ideas. Three pens disappeared from my desk.
Some nouns are not countable.
Examples include sugar, air, rice, tea, knowledge, anger, love, and fear. (These words typically do not have a plural form.)
Plural nouns
In English, we typically make nouns plural by adding –s or –es. How do you know when to add “s” and when to add “es”? If the word ends with two consonants, you typically need to add “es.”

Singular Plural
hat hats
ocean oceans
game games
dish dishes

A noun ending in –y preceded by a consonant makes the plural with –ies.

Singular Plural
a cry cries
a fly flies
a poppy poppies
a baby babies

Irregular plural forms can confuse people. Some of these “rule breakers” are in the following list:

Singular Plural Singular Plural
woman women man men
child children tooth teeth
foot feet person people
leaf leaves half halves
knife knives wife wives
life lives loaf loaves
potato potatoes cactus cacti
nucleus nuclei syllabus syllabi
analysis analyses diagnosis diagnoses
oasis oases thesis theses
crisis crises phenomenon phenomena
datum data criterion criteria

Some nouns are the same in the singular and plural forms.
(Sheep, fish, species, and aircraft are several examples.)

COMPOUND WORDS

Words like water and melon can be joined together to form a different word: watermelon.
bed + room = bedroom boy + friend = boyfriend
police + man = policeman hair + cut = haircut
You must learn these words and others like them. Having the computer check the spelling will not help because the words are spelled correctly even when they are not joined together.

Verbs

VERBS are action words
When you are writing or speaking, verbs can make your story more interesting. For example:
The girl walked to the store.
The girl sauntered to the store.
In our conversations, we often use verbs like got, went, and saw.
But we can use different verbs to be more specific. Did you “go to the park,” or did you “jog at the park?”
Think of verbs to replace the verbs in the following sentences:
o   Jenny went to the movie.
o   Jeff got a new cell phone.
o   Tammy saw a lizard on the sidewalk.

Main verbs change form (tense) to indicate when something happened. If a word does not indicate tense, it is not a main verb. All main verbs have FIVE forms, with the exception of “BE,” which has eight.
Base Form: talk, sing
Past Tense: Yesterday I (talked, sang).
Past Participle:In the past, I have (talked, sung).
Present Participle: Right now I am (talking, singing).
-s Form: Usually he/she/it (talks, sings).

What is a gerund?

Gerunds are the –ing form of verbs that are used as nouns. They usually name an action occurring before the action of the main verb. (The following verbs can only be followed by a gerund: admit, appreciate, avoid, complete, deny, discuss, dislike, enjoy, finish, imagine, keep, miss, postpone, practice, put off, quit, recall, recommend, resist, risk, suggest, and tolerate.)
Verb + Gerund = She admits wanting the best seat.
(The wanting occurs BEFORE the admission.)

What is an infinitive?

Infinitives include the word “to.” These words name an action that occurs AFTER the action of the main verb. Some verbs that are followed by an infinitive include: afford, agree, arrange, ask, beg, choose, claim, decide, deserve, expect, fail, hope, manage, need, offer, plan, pretend, promise, refuse, want, and wish.
Verb + Infinitive = She wants to win.
(The winning would happen AFTER the wanting.)

What are helping (a.k.a. auxiliary) verbs?

Some helping verbs—mostly forms of be, have, and do—show time (will have been playing, has played) or are used for emphasis (does play). Forms of do are also used to ask questions (Do you play?).
be, am, is being, been do, does, did
are, was, were have, has, had
Other helping verbs, called modals, signify the manner (or mode) of an action. Unlike the auxiliaries be, have, and do, one-word modals such as may, must, and will are almost never used alone as main verbs, nor do they change form to show person or number. Modals DO NOT add –s endings, and two modals are never used together.
One-word modals: can, could, may, might, will, would, shall, should, and must.
Where are the modals and main verbs in the following sentences?
o   Despite the weather, Jane will jog three miles.
o   Rachel would give the candy to you if you asked nicely.
o   You should write a letter to your grandparents.

These irregular verbs have to be memorized:

Present Past Past Participle
be was, were been
become became become
begin began begun
blow blew blown
break broke broken
bring brought brought
buy bought bought
catch caught caught
choose chose chosen
come came come
deal dealt dealt
do did done
drink drank drunk
drive drove driven
eat ate eaten
fall fell fallen
feed fed fed
fight fought fought
find found found
fly flew flown
forbid forbade forbidden
forget forgot forgotten
forgive forgave forgiven
freeze froze frozen
get got gotten
give gave given
go went gone
grow grew grown
have had had
hide hid hidden

For a complete list, visit http://owl.purdue.edu and type in “Irregular verbs” in the search box.
Information for these handouts was compiled from the Online Writing Lab at Purdue, A Writer’s Resource, and Keys for Writers.

Main

  • Submit Your Paper for Review
  • Electronic Tutor Evaluation
  • Grizzly Tutoring Lab
  • Like us on Facebook!

MLA and APA help

  • APA Lecture
  • APA Student Paper Example.pdf
  • Editing essays using Word
  • MLA correcting extra spaces on Word
  • MLA Lecture
  • MLA on Word
  • MLA Works Cited on Word
  • Saving in PDF format

Other

  • Assessment of Multiple Intelligences

Writing Resources

  • Indiana University's Writing Tutorial Services
  • Purdue's Online Writing Lab
New beginnings...endless possibilitiesNew beginnings...endless possibilities
  • Last Modified: August 7, 2018
  • Accessibility
  • Disclaimer
  • Disclosures
  • EO/AA/M/F/Veterans/Disability/Sexual Orientation/Gender Identity
  • © 2013 Board of Governors, Missouri State University
  • Contact Information