So many grammar debates, so little time. And here’s yet another one: Are proper adjectives a thing? Or are they really just proper noun elements within a common noun?

We will likely never know for sure….

However, it really doesn’t matter what you call them. They need some proper capitalization!

So let’s start with the proper noun. (Practice proper nouns more HERE!)

We have a tendency to think that the noun is the first part of speech we learn, so it’s automatically simple to locate, which isn’t true at all (it’s true we learn it first–just not true that it is simple!).
A noun can become many different parts of speech.

1) Take the word school–I’m going to school you (verb)

2) The school children (adjective)

3) She is so schoolish when she explains things (adjective)

4) Let’s go to school now (finally, the noun).

One cannot truly find the part of speech that a word is when the word is out of context. (Be careful of programs that teach parts of speech out of context if you are choosing grammar materials for your children! They should never be given a list of words and told to tell the part of speech of each one!)
The same thing is true of capitalization–we learn it early, yet it is far from simple.
*Cap this in this instance but not in this.
*Cap this when it is used as an address but not when it is used in a non-address scenario.
*And on and on.

Into that madness, enter the proper adjective–another capitalization nightmare, in many cases.

Essentially, a proper adjective is a proper noun used as an adjective. The key to using this properly (with the proper capitalization) is knowing for sure that the word is usually a proper noun (without having context, in many cases!).

For example, the following words are capitalized when used as adjectives:

1. Spanish….Spanish speaker

2. Jesuit…Jesuit priests

3. Herculean….Herculean effort

4. French…French braid

So…. a proper adjective is essentially a proper noun that has been put into adjective form.
Words are different parts of speech based, oftentimes, on their suffixes. For example, loveliness (with the ness suffix) is a noun…but changing a suffix often changes a word’s part of speech. Thus, lovely is an adjective; loveliness is a noun.

There are many other difficulties with proper adjectives and proper noun elements within common nouns.

For example, animal, flower, plant, and tree breeds are not capitalized (i.e. husky, mockingbird, rose, poison ivy, and sycamore tree). However, if a proper adjective or proper noun element is part of the name, that part of it is capitalized (but the rest of it remains lower case):

1. black-eyed Susan (Susan is a proper noun in other contexts, so it gets capitalized here as well)

2. Australian sheep dog

3. Alaskan husky

4. Jack Russell terrier

No wonder our students are confused!

It is up to us to help them with these challenging usage scenarios.
We can do this by…

1) Being patient with them. (Sometimes we have to look these things up ourselves!)

2) Giving them lots of practice with them–and verbal feedback and discussion of the practice sentences and exercises.

3) Not making everything “count.”

A word about number three above. In my books, I use a TPA approach—Teach-Practice-Apply. This means they learn the information in the teaching portion of the book. Then they practice the skills with little or no grading. This is done in passages of material usually–completely in context. Then they apply it in exercises/assignments, and, ultimately, in the Checklist Challenge and their writing–where the rubber really meets the road and where we want the application to really sink in.

Let’s make grammar, usage, spelling, writing–all the things–as easy as we can for our students! 

The post Are Proper Adjectives Even a Real Thing? appeared first on Character Ink.

Welcome to another Punctuation Puzzle! Yep… a puzzle that you solve by putting in the correct punctuation and words/usage fixes—along with explanations and answers about each error!

Perfect for students and teachers alike!

Today’s Puzzle is about Led verses Lead and Alot verses A Lot … and it uses an interesting sentence from one of our Write-for-a-Month/Write On books.

Read More….

Save

Save

The post Punctuation Puzzle: Led vs. Lead & Alot vs. A lot appeared first on Character Ink.

I recently had the misfortune of seeing a sign outside a chicken franchise that read hot, juicy, chicken. You can imagine my outrage!!!

It, of course, took us here at Language Lady to Comma Clues #2: Use Commas to Separate Two or More Describers (But Not Between the Describer and the Word Being Described!).

Two benchmarks that I teach for inserting commas between describers:

1. If you can reverse the order of the words that you are placing a comma between, and the phrase still makes sense, use a comma:

a. She had on that bright, beautiful dress. (She had on that beautiful, bright dress—YES…comma is needed.)

b. She had on that, bright dress. (She had on bright that dress–NO…comma is not needed.)

2. If you can put an AND in between the two words you are placing a comma between, and the phrase still makes sense, use a comma:

a. She had on that bright, beautiful dress. (She had on that bright and beautiful dress—YES…comma is needed.)

b. She on that, bright dress. (She had on that and bright dress—NO…comma is not needed.)

For those who like technical explanations, we teach that commas go between DESCRIPTIVE adjectives (bright, beautiful) but not between CLARIFYING adjectives (that, five, this–which are usually called something else anyway, like pronouns, etc.).

Watch me teach adjectives in my previous post!

For more on descriptive writing, creative writing, etc., check out my Write On, Mowgli; Write On, Peter Pan; or Write On, Beauty and Beast downloadable books!

The post Comma Clues #2: Comma Between Double Describers appeared first on Character Ink.

Students writing stories this week? Parents/teachers helping kids with stories this week?

Follow this “describing tip” we use with our student to help with the descriptions in your writing:

“Only use an adjective that will cause your reader to have a different picture in his mind than he would have without the adjective.”

For example, do not write “small, wooden, isolated cabin.” The picture that a reader gets when reading that is not much different than he would get if he just read “cabin.” By their nature, most cabins are small, wooden, and isolated (or at least we picture them as so).

Only use an adjective if it creates a different picture of the noun than the noun alone paints. Use specific and vivid adjectives–or omit them altogether.

I did a Facebook Live this week of me teaching adjectives and book reports to an amazing group of middle schoolers. Hope you enjoy it! (More on the book report later!)

Save

The post Writing With Adjectives: Live Video Lesson appeared first on Character Ink.

I recently had the misfortune of seeing a sign outside a chicken franchise that read hot, juicy, chicken. You can imagine my outrage!!! It, of course, took us here at Language Lady to Comma Clues #2: Use Commas to Separate Two or More Describers (But Not Between the Describer and the Word Being Described!).

I was thrilled to find the image above to instruct you in the commas-with-describers rule because those two benchmarks are the ones that I teach in my grammar books:

1. If you can reverse the order of the words that you are placing a comma between, and the phrase still makes sense, use a comma:

a. She had on that bright, beautiful dress. (She had on that beautiful, bright dress—YES…comma is needed.)

b. She had on that, bright dress. (She had on bright that dress–NO…comma is not needed.)

2. If you can put an AND in between the two words you are placing a comma between, and the phrase still makes sense, use a comma:

a. She had on that bright, beautiful dress. (She had on that bright and beautiful dress—YES…comma is needed.)

b. She on that, bright dress. (She had on that and bright dress—NO…comma is not needed.)

For those who like technical explanations, we teach that commas go between DESCRIPTIVE adjectivest (bright, beautiful) but not between CLARIFYING adjectives (that, five, this–which are usually called something else anyway, like pronouns, etc.).

More on comma before the and in a series of three or more (bright, beautiful, and colorful dress) in Comma Clues #3! Have a lovely, grammatically-correct day!

Save

The post Comma Clues #2: Use Commas to Separate Two or More Describers appeared first on Character Ink.

Wordy Wednesday!

Welcome to Wordy Wednesday! Did you know that strengthlessnesses is the longest word containing only one (albeit very repeating) vowel? Neither did I. And I don’t really care for it. I mean, it is cumbersome to say–and that is a whole lot of e’s and s’s to remember to spell the crazy word.

But I love unique and unusual–and strengthlessnesses is definitely both of those! Here are some vitals about this “longest word containing only one (albeit very repeating) vowel”:

1. It is a noun–did you know that when a word ends in ness, it is almost always a noun? This helps with standardized testing greatly. Ness words are nearly always nouns, so in a “fill in the blank” type of assignment, if the word in question ends in ness, it has to go in a spot where a noun fits.

Tricky Trick to Help It Stick: We have students learn key words to remember things. For instance, to remember that ness words are nearly always nouns, memorize a key word or two that you know is a noun and that ends in ness.

Other ness nouns: happiness, hopefulness, craziness, gratefulness, joyfulness, smartness

2. It has to do with having strength–we teach our students to think about what you already know–anytime–but especially when approaching a new word. Is there anything about the word strengthlessnesses that you already know?
     a. You know what its base means. You already what strength means!
     b. You know that less means less or not having that quality. (We do a lot of root and affix studies here!)
 
Because of those two “things you already know,” you can know that strengthlessnesses has something to do with not having strength (i.e. less strength).

Note: You know more than you think you know! Repeat this over and over to yourself: “I know more than I think I know. I know more than I think I know.” Use what you know to learn more!

3. It can be spelled syllable-by-syllable (if you are a biphonic man or biphonic woman!): strength-less-ness-es.

4. You can also make up a trick to remember how to spell it, such as “It contains four e’s and six s’s. Or that it has four syllables–which tells you that it will have at least four vowels in it (or y’s acting like vowels)–because a syllable always contains at least one vowel. A vowel is what makes a syllable!

5. You can learn the variations of this word–because you can remember from your vocabulary studies with Language Lady that suffixes (affixes added to the ends of words) might change the SPELLING of the base word (pity is changed to piti in pitiful) but does not change the MEANING of the base word. Even with three suffixes added (less, ness, and es), the base word of strength still means strength.
             a.  stengthless–adjective meaning without strength (less words are often adjectives!)
             b. strengthlessly–adverb meaning without strength (ly words are often adverbs)
             c. strengthelessness–a noun describing someone or something that is without strength (ness words are often nouns)
            d. strengthlessnesses–a noun that means more than one someone or something that is without strength (es makes the word plural).


So there you have it–the longest word with only one repeating vowel. Did you know that you could learn so much from one word? You know a lot more than you think you know! Smile…

The post Strengthlessnesses—Longest Word With One Vowel appeared first on Character Ink.

“Only use an adjective that will cause your reader to have a different picture in his mind than he would have without the adjective.”

For example, do not write “small, wooden, isolated cabin.” The picture that a reader gets when reading that is not much different than he would get if he just read “cabin.” By their nature, most cabins are small, wooden, and isolated (or at least we picture them as so).

Only use an adjective if it creates a different picture of the noun than the noun alone paints. Use specific and vivid adjectives–or omit them altogether. 

P.S. Are you following us on Facebook? We offer a lot more tips and tidbits daily at our Facebook page than we can get put up on the blog. Join us!

The post Writing With Descriptive Adjectives appeared first on Character Ink.