Parts of Speech Cheat Sheet

NOUN: a person, place, thing, or idea Usually you can put a word “a” or “the” before a noun and it sounds correct.

VERB: an action word or a “state of being” word (like “jump” or “love”) Some verbs are “to be” verbs (like is, am, are, was, were)

ADJECTIVE: describes a noun or a pronoun.  Answer the questions: What kind?, How many?, Which ones?  Come before the noun or pronoun they modify (tell you about) – the small dog  Include comparison words like tougher or more wonderful  The articles (a, an, the) are adjectives – because they tell how many

ADVERB: modify verbs, adjectives, and other adverbs – (everything but nouns and pronouns)  Answer the questions: How?, When?, Where?, How much?, How often?, Under what condition?, To what degree?  Can be placed anywhere in a sentence  Typically end in –ly  Most common are too, very, not

PREPOSITION: shows the relation between the object of the preposition and the other words in the sentence. A prepositional phrase has the preposition, the object, and an adjective to describe the object. (Ex. under the table, into the barn, behind the door, to the store, in the yard)

CONJUNCTION: a word that joins – individual words (and, but, or, nor, so, yet, for) or a group of words (when, because, though, unless, until, etc.)

INTERJECTION: express strong emotion or surprise. Usually there is an exclamation point or comma after the interjection.

PRONOUN: takes the place of a noun (Ex. Sara = she, Joe = he, Dog = it, Sara and I = we, Sara and Joe = they)

Prep adj n adj adv adj n v adv prep adj adj n conj v (After the party), the extremely brown fox jumped quickly (over the red fence) and ran.