Showing posts with label parts of speech. Show all posts
Showing posts with label parts of speech. Show all posts

Monday, August 12, 2013

Gerunds

Happy Monday, good people of the blogosphere! Today, we're back to our regularly scheduled program: All things writerly and good books! One of the things I hated in school was diagramming sentences. It made English class boring. I just wanted to read books and write stories, ya know? But, alas, knowing the difference in a preposition, verb, adjective, and noun matters. Do you know what a gerund is? If you paid attention in English, you do. If you didn't, read on!

First, a definition:
ger·und  /ˈjerənd/ Noun - A form that is derived from a verb but that functions as a noun, in English ending in -ing.


Now, some examples:
Asking a question is easy.
Baking is her favorite past-time.
We went swimming in the ocean.
No matter which way we looked, the trees prevented us from seeing the car.

Grammar girl goes into a deeper definition, even giving examples of nouny gerunds, verby gerunds, and, the thing many gerunds are confused with, present participles.

But, for now, just know that gerunds end in -ing.

Pop over to the IBGW blog to hear about the latest book we've worked on and see inside!

I hope this gave you a little refresher course.

Well, that's all for today, folks! Until next time, WRITE ON!

Jo