Grammar and vocabulary

A noun

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

为什么Concrete 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

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

为什么Every 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

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

为什么It 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

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

为什么It 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

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

为什么The 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

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

为什么With 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

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

为什么The 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

提示Un-, dis- and mis- are all examples of it.

为什么Knowing 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

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

为什么Three 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

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

为什么The 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

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

为什么It 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

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

为什么It 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.