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Sound Writing

Cody Chun, Kieran O’Neil, Kylie Young, Julie Nelson Christoph

Subsection 7.1.1 Parts of Speech

Each word in a sentence belongs to a part of speech. There are eight parts of speech: nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, pronouns, prepositions, conjunctions, and interjections. Words can belong to multiple parts of speech, depending on how they’re being used. By being able to identify the part of speech a word falls into, you can better understand the underlying forms and meanings of a sentence.
List 7.1.1. The Eight Parts of Speech
noun
person, place, or thing
Examples: book, cat, dog, I, me, University of Puget Sound
verb
action word
Examples: agonize, do, jump, run, swim
adjective
describes a noun
Examples: cold, green, rainy, windy
adverb
describes a verb (often ends in -ly)
Examples: beautifully, fast, quickly, slowly
pronoun
replaces a noun
Examples: he, his, her, it, she, they, theirs
preposition
describes timing or placement of a noun or pronoun
Examples: about, at, beside, by, during, for, instead of
conjunction
connects phrases and clauses
A coordinating conjunction coordinates two ideas that are emphasized equally in the sentence.
Examples: FANBOYS
If you want to remember all the coordinating conjunctions, you just need to remember the acronym FANBOYS (Get it? For, And, Nor, But, Or, Yet, So).
A subordinating conjunction subordinates one idea or clause to another idea or clause.
Examples: after, although, because, since, than, whether, while
interjection
an exclamation that shows the writer’s emotions
Examples: Ah!, crap, duh, huh?, no!, wow
A colorful graphic displays definitions and examples for each part of speech. The definitions are the same as in the list above and the examples are as follows. Noun: president, car, house; verb: run, sing, jump; adjective: pretty, cool, nosy; adverb: fast, quickly, miraculously; pronoun: he, she, they, it; preposition: at, on, before; conjunction: and, but, yet, because; interjection: yikes, oh!, huh? Below the types of speech is a phrase with the parts of speech color coded. The phrase is "The cute [adjective] cat [noun] quickly [adverb] jumped [verb] over [preposition] the fence [noun], but [conjunction], sadly [adverb], he [pronoun] missed [verb] dinner [noun]. Egads! [interjection]"
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