Nouns

Introduction to Nouns

A noun is a part of speech that names a person, place, or thing. Many different kinds of nouns are used in the English language. Some are specific for people, places, events, and some represent groups or collections. Some nouns aren't even nouns; they're verbs acting like nouns in sentences.

Nouns can be singular, referring to one thing, or plural, referring to more than one thing. Nouns can be possessive as well; possessive nouns indicate ownership or a close relationship. Regardless of the type, nouns should always agree with their verbs in sentences; use singular verbs with singular nouns and plural verbs with plural nouns. You have to know how a noun works in order to write an effective sentence.

Proper Nouns

If a noun names a specific person or place, or a particular event or group, it is called a proper noun and is always capitalized. Some examples are Eleanor Roosevelt, Niagara Falls, Dracula, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Great Depression, and Desert Storm. This seems simple enough.

Unfortunately, some writers assign proper-noun status fairly indiscriminately to other words, sprinkling capital letters freely throughout their prose. For example, the Manhattan Project is appropriately capitalized because it is a historic project, the name given to the specific wartime effort to design and build the first nuclear weapons. But project should not be capitalized when referring to a club's project to clean up the campus. Similarly, the Great Depression should be capitalized because it refers to the specific historical period of economic failure that began with the stock market collapse in 1929. When the word depression refers to other economic hard times, however, it is not a proper noun but a common noun and should not be capitalized. Some flexibility in capitalizing nouns is acceptable. A writer may have a valid reason for capitalizing a particular term, for example, and some companies use style guides that dictate capital letters for job titles such as manager. But often the use of a capital outside the basic rule is an effort to give a word an air of importance, and you should avoid it.

Verbs Used as Nouns

One special case is when a verb is used as a noun. Here the verb form is altered and it serves the same function as a noun in the sentence. This type of noun is called a gerund.

The gerund

A noun created from the - ing form of a verb is called a gerund. Like other nouns, gerunds act as subjects and objects in sentences.

• Sleeping sometimes serves as an escape from studying.

The gerunds sleeping and studying are - ing forms of the verbs sleep and study. Sleeping is the noun functioning as the subject of this sentence, and studying is an object (in this case, the object of a preposition).

The problem gerund

Gerunds can sometimes be difficult to use properly in a sentence. What problems will you have with gerunds?

• When a noun or pronoun precedes a gerund, use the possessive case of the noun or pronoun.

  • Jane's sleeping was sometimes an escape from studying.

• Even when you think that the word before the gerund looks like an object, use the possessive case.

  • Jane was annoyed by Bill's studying.

  • not Jane was annoyed by Bill studying.