Possessive case
This post is about the possessive case of nouns. The case of a noun is the form that shows its relation to other words in a sentence. Grammarians disagree about how many cases there...
Category: Nouns
Collective nouns
We use collective nouns to refer to a collection of individual people, creatures or objects. Examples: In British English, we can treat a collective noun as either singular or plural, depending on the context....
Compound nouns
We form compound nouns by joining together two words. Sometimes we keep these words separate. Examples: coffee cup fairy tale washing machine Sometimes we hyphenate them (join them together by a hyphen). Examples:...
Countable and uncountable nouns
Nouns can be either countable or uncountable. Countable nouns can be: preceded by a (a dog), both singular and plural (dog, dogs) counted (one dog, two dogs, three dogs, thirty dogs). Examples: programme case...
Possessive nouns
The possessive (or “genitive”) case of regular singular nouns is formed by adding –‘s (an apostrophe followed by an s). Examples: Jim’s (as in Jim’s foot) Mum’s (as in Mum’s car) horse’s (as in...
Parts of Speech
In English, words are classified according to nine types. These types are called “parts of speech”. The nine parts of speech are: Nouns naming words Examples: Ivan; bird; London; president, car, computer, wind Verbs...
Noun phrases
A noun phrase consists of a noun joined with one or more other word. Together they can act as the subject, object or complement of a sentence. Examples (with the noun phrases underlined): The...
Compound nouns
A compound noun is formed by joining together two words. Sometimes these words remain separate. Examples: washing machine coffee cup fairy tale Sometimes they are hyphenated (joined together by a hyphen). Examples: holiday-maker hold-up...
Noun gender
Gender has very little place in English language, and no place at all in classifying nouns. There are some nouns that specifically relate to male people or creatures and some that relate specifically to...
Singular nouns and plural nouns
Most nouns in English can be said to be either singular or plural. The most usual way of forming a plural noun from a singular is to add –s. Examples: dog/dogs boy/boys desk/desks Most...