Basic English Grammar Rules

No language has 'rules' and English is no exception. People describe grammar as a set of rules. But I think grammar is only a guideline that helps you understand and learn a language. It is not mandatory that you learn the grammar and composition of a language to learn the language. If you don't agree with me, just recall how you learned your mother tongue. But grammar does help you grasp a foreign language faster. So learning the English grammar standard rules will make it easier for you to learn English.

Note that, this article focuses on enlisting only the basic rules and regulations of the English language, which are used in everyday life. Take a look at the following sections, and start applying them in your communication skills too.

Sentences Clauses and Phrases
A sentence is the most basic entity of any language. It is made up of a subject and a predicate. Subject is the person or thing that is the point of focus of what you are expressing through the sentence. Predicate is the rest of the sentence that says something about the subject or its action. Example - Jack runs on the beach. Jack is the subject and the rest is predicate.

A clause is an incomplete sentence that contains a subject and a predicate. In other words, it is a part of a complete sentence. Example - The boy is going to the school, and he is going to eat there. Here we have two clauses, one before the comma and one after it.

A phrase is a group of words. It does not have a subject or predicate. Example - During the night, I watched a movie. Here during the night is a phrase.

Parts of Speech
The words used in English are categorized into eight parts of speech. The same words may fall under different categories depending upon the way it is used. The eight parts of speech are noun, pronoun, verb, adjective, adverb, proposition, conjunction and interjection.

Noun - It is the name of any person, object or place. Further there are various types of nouns used in grammar.

Pronoun - A pronoun is a word that is used instead of a noun. He, she, they etc are all pronouns.

Verb - A verb is a word that shows some sport of action. There are types of verbs too. One important type is helping verbs.

Adjective - An adjective is a word that gives you additional information about the noun. Here is a list of adjectives as examples.

Adverb - An adverb is a word that provides some more information about the verb. Example - He runs fast. Here fast is an adverb.

Preposition - A preposition is a word that shows the relation between two nouns, pronouns etc. Here are some examples of prepositions.

Conjunction - A conjunction is a word that connects two words, sentences etc. Some examples of conjunctions are 'and', 'but', 'since' etc.

Interjection - Interjection is a word that shows exclamation and it is commonly followed by an exclamation mark.

Articles
Articles are these three simple words - a, an, and the. They are sometimes categorized as a part of speech. The reason I have mentioned them separately is that they are very important, and so is their correct usage.

Capitalization
All the words at the starting of a sentence are not the only ones that are supposed to be written in capital letters. You have to capitalize all the proper names such as people and places. Also, all sorts of titles and acronyms should be written in capital letters. If you are quoting a sentence, its first word should be capitalized.

Punctuation
This is an important rule of grammar because one misplaced comma can change the meaning of the entire sentence. Use of comma is made to indicate a pause in the statement. Whereas use of semicolon is made to separate words or sentences of opposite meaning. Use of colon indicates the beginning of a list or series. Hyphen use shows connected words or two separate syllables of a single word. There are other rules of punctuation too.

Tenses
Tenses mean the time that is being spoken or written about. There are three major tenses - past, present and future. Depending upon the tense the verbs used in the sentences change their form. The tenses may also be used in a mixed way. That is, using two or all three tenses in one sentence. There are different forms of tenses like simple present, present continuous, simple past etc.

You should note that this was only a brief overview of the rules of grammar, and to master the language, you will have to study numerous rules in depth, which is never-ending.