Grammar and vocabulary

An abstract noun

提示Hope, freedom and fear are real, yet nothing you could hold in your hand.

为什么Concrete nouns name what the senses can meet; this kind names ideas. Both behave the same way in a sentence, which is why they share the wider label.

An auxiliary verb

提示The helper in 'I am running' and 'Do you know?' — it props up the main action word.

为什么'Be', 'have' and 'do' are the common ones; 'can', 'might' and 'should' are the modal kind. Spotting them is how you tell 'was walking' from 'walked'.

noun

提示It is the thing the sentence is about — swap in 'it' and the line still works.

为什么A word carries no class of its own until it is used: 'swimming' names an activity here, describes in 'swimming pool', and states an action in 'she is swimming'. Test the job, not the ending.

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.

It's

提示The mark stands in for a missing letter — the possessive form has no mark at all.

为什么The apostrophe marks the dropped 'i' of 'is'. Belonging-to-it takes no apostrophe, just as 'his' and 'hers' take none.

After the s: weeks'

提示Read it as notice OF two of them — the period of time owns the notice, and that owner is plural.

为什么Time and measure phrases take a possessive apostrophe because the period owns what follows: 'a day's delay', 'three months' pay'. The mark sits after the owner exactly as it is spelled, so a plural already ending in s takes it last.

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.

Morpheme

提示Smaller than a word, larger than a letter — the plural 's' counts as one all by itself.

为什么Breaking a long word into these blocks unlocks spelling and meaning together: 'trans' means across, 'port' means carry and 'able' makes an adjective, so 'transportable' 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.