Nouns

Simply put, nouns are words that refer to a person, place, or thing. There are various types of nouns, however, including common nouns, proper nouns, plural nouns, possessive nouns, or even verbs acting like nouns within the context of a sentence (called "gerunds"). (McClain and Roth, 1999)

Common Nouns. These words indicate a person, place, or thing that is not specific. They can be viewed as the "generic" word for whatever is being written about. For example car, train, plane, cat, person, building, tower, tiger, raincoat, star, and so on. These nouns can also have a plural form cars, trains, planes, cats, and so forth.

Proper Nouns. These words indicate unique people, places, and things. Examples include the Eiffel Tower, Albert Einstein, Saturn, Venus de Milo, A Tale of Two Cities (novel), Pakistan, Sharon Jones, Bob Thomas, The United States of America, The Bible, Reese's Pieces, and so forth.

Collective Nouns. These are nouns that refer to a collection of people or things, like "school (of fish)," "team," "collection," "herd," "army," and others.

Gerunds. Gerunds are verbs that are used as nouns, usually by placing "-ing" at the end (that is, they are the present participle of the verb). Examples of gerunds include "Hiking is a healthy activity." "Writing essays can be a fun activity." "Educating our youth should be a priority." "Sandra likes running, skiing, and riding her bike."

Prepositions

Prepositions show physical relationships between two or more objects, in other words, they indicate relative location, such as "on," "over," "above," "below," and others. Every preposition introduces what is called a prepositional phrase ("preposition" literally meaning, "positioned before a phrase"). Some examples of prepositions and prepositional phrases are as follows.

"The dog was on the stove again."

"Six banners flapped in the breeze."

"She could hardly recognize him because of the moustache below his long, crooked nose."