Grammar and vocabulary

A noun

HintEverything you can point at has one, and so do ideas like justice and fear.

The whyConcrete ones name what you can touch; abstract ones name ideas. Both behave the same way in a sentence, which is why they share a label.

A verb

HintThe doing or being word — no sentence can work without one.

The whyEvery clause is built round one. Finding it first is the quickest way to work out whether a group of words is a complete sentence.

adverb

HintMany, though far from all, end in -ly: quickly, silently, yesterday.

The whyIt can modify a verb, an adjective or another word of its own class, which is why it can move around a sentence so freely.

A subordinate clause

HintIt leans on the main part — 'because it was raining' leaves you waiting for the rest.

The whyIt carries extra information — a reason, a time, a condition — and needs a main clause to attach to. That pairing makes a complex sentence.

The letter o

HintTwo words squashed into one, and something gets dropped where they meet.

The whyThe mark stands in for whatever was removed when two words were contracted, and it sits exactly where the gap is, never at the join.

Before the s: Amara's

HintThe owner comes first, then the mark, then the letter that shows ownership.

The whyWith a single owner the mark comes before the s. When the owner is a plural that already ends in s, it goes after the s instead.

Inside the inverted commas

HintIt stays within the speech marks, tucked up against the last spoken word.

The whyThe punctuation belongs to the words that were actually spoken, so it is kept with them. The reporting clause then begins in lower case.

A prefix

HintUn-, dis- and mis- are all examples of it.

The whyKnowing a handful unlocks hundreds of words: "pre-" means before and "sub-" means under, so a new word often decodes without a dictionary.

A comma splice

Hint'It was late, we went home' — the join is far too weak to hold two whole ideas.

The whyThree repairs work: a full stop, a joining word such as and or but, or a semicolon. The choice depends on how closely the ideas belong together.

The box of apples was heavy

HintAsk what the sentence is really about — the container, not the things inside it.

The whyThe verb agrees with the subject of the sentence, not with the nearest noun. Words sitting between the two are there to distract you.

The passive voice

HintThe thing that had the action done to it has been shoved to the front of the sentence.

The whyIt moves the doer to the end, or drops them entirely — which is why reports and apologies reach for it when nobody wants to say who is responsible.

Register

HintThe same idea can be dressed in a tracksuit or in a dinner jacket.

The whyIt is set by vocabulary, sentence length and contractions. A job application and a message to a friend say things at opposite ends of the scale.