English Grammar Understanding the Basics

Do you shudder when you hear the words noun or verb? Don't worry — you already know all about word categories, also known as parts of speech, though you may not think you do. You know, for example, that you can say the idea and the boy but not *the about or *happy the. (As stated in the How to use this book section, an asterisk [*] is used to indicate that something is ungrammatical.) That is, you know that some words can go in some places in a sentence and others can't. A word category, or part of speech, is just a name given to a group of words that have something in common, such as where they can go in a sentence. Part I gives you a quick and easy guide to basic word categories.