Grammar tips

Click on the links below for straightforward advice on some of the trickier points of English grammar:

structure word	word that has no real meaning in a sentence, such as a pronoun or auxiliary verb (as opposed to a content word, such as verb or noun); structure words are not normally stressed in speech eg: "Could you BRING my GLASSES because I've LEFT them at HOME"
subject	one of the two main parts (subject and predicate) of a sentence; the subject is the part that is not the predicate; typically, the subject is the first noun phrase in asentence and is what the rest of the sentence "is about" eg: "The rain water was dirty", "Mary is beautiful", "Who saw you?"
subjective case also called "nominative"	case form of a pronoun indicating a subject eg: Did she tell you about her?
subjunctive	fairly rare verb form typically used to talk about events that are not certain to happen, usually something that someone wants, hopes or imagines will happen; formed with BARE INFINITIVE (except past of "be") eg: "The President requests that John attend the meeting"
subordinate clause	another term for dependent clause
suffix	affix that occurs after the root or stem of a word eg: happiness, quickly
superlative,superlative adjective	adjective or adverb that describes the extreme degree of something eg: happiest, most quickly
SVO	subject-verb-object; a common word order where the subject is followed by the verb and then the object eg: "The man crossed the street"
syntax	sentence structure; the rules about sentence structure
tag question	special construction with statement that ends in a mini-question; the whole sentence is a tag question; the mini-question is a question tag; usually used to obtain confirmation eg: "The Earth is round, isn't it?", "You don't eat meat, do you?"
tense	form of a verb that shows us when the action or state happens (past, present or future). Note that the name of a tense is not always a guide to when the action happens. The "present continuous tense", for example, can be used to talk about the present or the future.
third conditional	"if-then" conditional structure used to talk about a possible event in the past that did not happen (and is therefore now impossible) eg: "If we had won the lottery we would have bought a car"
transitive verb	action verb that has a direct object (receiver of the action); see also intransitive verb eg: "The kids always eat a snack while they watch TV"
uncountable nouns (also called "mass nouns" or "non-count")	thing that you cannot count, such as substances or concepts; see also countable nouns eg: water, furniture, music
usage	way in which words and constructions are normally used in any particular language
V1, V2, V3	referring to Verb 1, Verb 2, Verb 3 - being the base, past and past participle that students typically learn for irregular verbs eg: speak, spoke, spoken
verb	word that describes the subject's action or state and that we can change orconjugate based on tense and person eg: (to) work, (to) love, (to) begin
voice	form of a verb that shows the relation of the subject to the action; there are two voices in English: active, passive
WH-question	question using a WH-word and expecting an answer that is not "yes" or "no"; WH-questions are "open" questions; see also yes-no question eg: Where are you going?
WH-word(also called "question word")	word that asks a WH-question; there are 7 WH-words: who, what, where, when, which, why, how
word order	order or sequence in which words occur within a sentence; basic word order for English is subject-verb-object or SVO
yes-no question	question to which the answer is yes or no; yes-no questions are "closed" questions; see also WH-question eg: "Do you like coffee?"
zero conditional	"if-then" conditional structure used when the result of the condition is always true (based on fact) eg: "If you dial O, the operator comes on"

* note that technically English does not have a real future tense

*some authorities consider the base form of the verb without "to" to be the true infinitive