Use of English Guide
Table of contents
1 Parts of speech
2 Groups of words
3 Punctuation
1 Parts of speech
| Noun | Name of a person, thing or quality. e.g. boy, John, brick, size. |
| Pronoun | Stands in place of a noun (to avoid repeating it). e.g. she, it, they, you, who, whom, I. |
| Verb | Expresses an action, or a state of being. e.g. she measured, he sat, I am, they will go. |
| Adjective | Describes the noun or pronoun. e.g. long, first, own, heavy. |
| Adverb | Qualifies a verb, or other part of speech to show how, where, when or why. e.g. quickly, energetically, today, often. |
| Conjunction | Shows the relationship between words, phrases or clauses. e.g. and, although, or, before. |
| Preposition | Introduces a phrase and followed by a noun or pronoun. e.g. on, by, between, to, about. |
| Subject | The person or thing doing the action or in a state of being. e.g. I built the circuit, he showed me, the motor blew up. |
| Object | The person or thing affected by the action. e.g. I built the circuit, he showed me. |
| Complement | Completes the sense of states of being verbs. e.g. I am a student, she seems friendly. |
2 Groups of words
| Phrase | A group of words which acts as a noun, adjective or adverb. e.g: (noun) to write well requires practice (adjective) the girl in the blue dress came second (adverb) put it on the table |
| Clause | A group of words containing a verb and a subject. e.g. the meter was checked before connection |
| Sentence | Forms a complete statement; should normally contain a verb; does not have to be a single clause. e.g. The meter was checked before connection and was found to be faulty. |
| Paragraph | Combines sentences relating to the same ideas. |
3 Punctuation
| Full stop ( . ) | Ends a sentence and is followed by a word beginning with a capital letter. Also indicates abbreviations where the shortened form does not contain the last letter e.g. Co. Prof. but Dr |
| Comma ( , ) | Suggests that certain words should be grouped together e.g. (clauses) At a later date, if the project goes ahead, the engineer may be involved a great deal. Separates a list of words e.g. Try to work quickly, quietly, confidently and efficiently. You will need pen, paper, ruler and calculator. |
| Apostrophe ( ' ) | Shows possession e.g. the man's coat, the audience's concentration (Note for plurals it goes after the s - the cats' dinners) Shows that a letter has been omitted e.g. it's, don't, I'd, 'scope. (N.B. this should not be used in formal, technical writing) |
| Question mark ( ? ) | Marks the end of a sentence which is a question. |
| Inverted commas ( "..." ) | Quotation marks, used in reports to indicate text from an original source. |
| Capital letters | Used at the start of every sentence, for proper nouns. e.g. Ahmed, Brighton, Thursday For adjectives derived from proper nouns e.g. the Brighton festival For the first and main words of a title e.g. the University of Sussex For the personal pronoun 'I' |
| Semi-colon ( ; ) | A mild full stop, links statements that could be separate sentences but are strongly linked e.g. I have checked the calculations; now we can work on the model. |
| Colon ( : ) | Provides an introduction e.g. Some things are essential: boots, anorak, map. I have checked the calculations: they are correct. |
| Brackets ( ) | Similar use to the comma but creates a stronger separation. Sentence should still make sense if brackets are removed. |
| Hyphen ( - ) | Links two words that, when combined, have the meaning of a single word. e.g. cross-section, day-long, long-running |
Dr Helen Prance
School of Engineering and Design
The University of Sussex
Updated 04.2010