The alphabet has twenty-six letters with which were made hundreds, thousands, millions, and probably billions of words, phrases, clauses, sentences, paragraphs, pages, chapters-Well, you can tell where this idea is going.

Letters and words in use can be organized into eight categories.This grouping gives some control and order to our language. ( And it makes it easier to write well.)

These categories are based on how a word is used by a writer, on the job the word is doing in a particular construction called a phrase, a clause, or a sentence.

Here is a list of those eight parts of speech.

• NOUNS -These are words that name people, places, things, and ideas.
• PRONOUNS-These are words that replace, substitute for, or stand in for nouns.
• ADJECTIVES- These are words that modify (change your mental picture of)nouns and pronouns.
• VERBS-These are words that tell action or tell state of being. {VERY IMPORTANT WORDS}
• Adverbs-These words modify (give more detail) verbs, adjectives, or other adverbs.
• Conjunctions-These words are used to join single words with other single words, phrases with phrases, and clauses with clauses.( Don’t worry, my dears. You’ll understand all these “grammar words” soon.)
• Interjections-These words go with sentences to put extra feeling into the sentences.
• Prepositions-These are words that relate other words in a sentence to each other.

With the help of the playful puppy, I will try to banish your fears of grammar. Poor grammar (tsk,tsk), it is SO misunderstood. But understanding grammar will take away its scary mystery, and without fear you are free to be a powerful, happy writer.

Reading is a most amazing ability which can be learned; writing well is a skill that can be developed.

For godmother magic, I have my wand. For wonderful writing, you have grammar.

Let’s look more carefully at each part of speech. Remember that when a word matches a part of speech’s “job description”, the word is being used as that part of speech.