21st Century Grammar Handbook (22 page)

Nonrestrictive phrase.
The same
punctuation
rules that apply to
nonrestrictive clauses
and
restrictive clauses
are in force for
prepositional phrases,
participial, and
infinitive
phrases: nonrestrictive
phrases
are set off with
commas,
while restrictive phrases are not.

Here are some examples of nonrestrictive and restrictive phrases: “The purpose of the work, to elucidate literature, was well served.” The infinitive phrase “to elucidate literature” is set off in commas here because it does not
contribute to the main point being made by the writer. One could equally well decide to use commas here because the phrase is a sort of
interjection
or aside to the reader, restating what is assumed to be known, the work’s purpose.
Dashes
or
parentheses
might also have been used to set off this phrase, depending on the degree of
emphasis
one wanted to accord it.

“The dog, tied to the tree, could not chase the squirrel.” The participial phrase “tied to the tree” can also be seen as a phrase in apposition, adding nonessential information to the main sense of the sentence. In either case, as appositional or nonrestrictive phrase, the point is that being tied to the tree is not the cause of the dog’s being unable to chase the squirrel, or the writer has chosen not to emphasize that possible reason for the dog’s inactivity. Removing the commas would suggest either that being tied to the tree kept the dog from chasing or, more grammatically, that other dogs not tied to the tree also couldn’t chase the squirrel, just as the one tied to the tree can’t. See
appositive.

“Rover, along with the rest of the dogs, ran off.” Here the nonrestrictive phrase is prepositional. The choice of this sentence structure leads the reader to assume that the writer wants to call attention to Rover and thus has put Rover in the first position in the sentence. One could have made the same statement with slightly different emphasis by saying, “Along with the rest of the dogs, Rover ran off.” The nonrestrictive phrase is still marked by a comma, which would also be necessary because the prepositional phrase now starts the sentence. In either case, it is essential only to understand that Rover ran off, and it is only of tangential interest that the rest of the dogs did so.

No one.
See
none.

Not, not only … but.
See
negative
and
correlative conjunction.

Nothing.
Negative
relative pronoun.
“Nothing” is singular in most
usages
and cannot appear in a
sentence
that is already negated. WRONG: “Nothing never happens.” RIGHT: “Nothing ever happens.” See
negative
and
double negative.

Not only … but.
See
not.

Noun.
Words that name things or people, in the very broadest sense, are called “nouns”: “dog,” “house,” “nurse,” “flower,” “egret.”

Nouns can function in dozens of ways in sentences, as
subjects,
as
objects,
and in many other categories. Nouns have
number
—they can be singular when referring to one thing or person, or they can be
plural
when naming more than one. In the plural most nouns change form, adding
“s.”
Nouns also have
gender,
indicating whether the person or thing they refer to is male or female in biological fact or analogical imagining. Finally, nouns also have
case,
which names the role they play in a sentence:
nominative
for subjects or
subject complements (predicate nouns)’, objective case
for objects of
verbs, prepositions,
and so on;
possessive
for ownership forms, usually marked with an
apostrophe
and “s” or just an apostrophe.

Nouns that are used as
names
of individual things or people are called
“proper nouns”
and are usually capitalized to
indicate their special function: “John,” “Mary,” “Ivan,”
“Titanic,”
“Blue,” and “Smith.” See
capitalization.

Nouns agree with verbs, pronouns,
adjectives,
and other words when they need to—when plurals must match plurals, masculines must refer to masculines, feminines must refer to feminines, and so on. See
agreement.
The
gerund
(“ing” form) of verbs can function as nouns: “Swimming is relaxing.”

Noun clause.
When
nouns, verbs,
and other words are combined into
clauses,
they can play any role in a sentence that a noun can play: “What you are looking for is right there.” The noun clause “what you are looking for” is the
subject
in this sentence, though it could just as easily be an
object
of an active verb (“I see what you are looking for”), an object for a
preposition
(“I attribute that to what you are looking for”), or a
predicate noun (subject complement):
“This is what you are looking for.”

Noun clauses are usually begun with one of the
relative pronouns: “that,”
“what,” “whatever,” “which,” “whichever,”
“who,”
“whoever,” “whom,” “whomever,” or “whose.” Such words as “how,”
“when,” “where,
” “whether,” or “why” can also start noun clauses: “I don’t see how you can do that.” In this example “how you can do that” is the object of the verb
“see.”

Noun phrase.
Nouns plus any words that modify them are noun phrases: “the sleeping yellow lion.” Like
noun clauses,
noun phrases can play any role in a
sentence
that a
noun
can—
subject, object, or predicate noun:
“The sleeping yellow lion rolled over.” “The hunter shot the sleeping
yellow lion.” “The zookeeper offered meat to the sleeping yellow lion.” “Where is the sleeping yellow lion?” In the examples, the noun phrase “sleeping yellow lion” operates, in turn, as subject, object, object of
preposition,
and
subject complement (predicate noun).
See also
modifier.
All other functions of nouns are possible for noun phrases, from apposition to verbalization.

n’t.
These letters and their
apostrophe
are often used to form
contractions
of
negative
verbs (combined with a shortened “not”): “isn’t,” “hadn’t,” “couldn’t.” Like all such contractions, these forms normally do not appear in
standard English
writing.

Number.
Words are said to have “number” because they indicate whether one or more than one thing or person is doing something. When one person or thing is involved, the number is singular; more than one person or thing is
plural.
Both
nouns
and
verbs
show number by changing form (see
declension
and
conjugation),
usually by adding or dropping
“5”:
“One dog lies in the shade of one tree.” “Many dogs lie in the shade of many trees.” Nouns must agree with verbs in number—singular
subjects
require singular verbs (see
agreement).
WRONG: “One dog lie … many dogs lies.”
Pronouns
also should agree with nouns in number: “Many dogs pant, and I hear them.” WRONG: “Many dogs pant, and I hear it.”

Numbers.
Numbers exist in two different forms and
styles,
from a grammatical point of view. They are spelled-out words (“twenty-one”) or figures (“21”), and they are
cardinal
(essentially
nouns
like the first example given) or
ordinal (adjectival
forms like “twenty-first” or “21st”).

Ordinals suggest ranking or ordering of things, while cardinals denote quantity or count in itself: “Twenty-one is the twenty-first number.” “‘A’ is one letter of twenty-six; it is the first in the alphabet.” Ordinals are formed, in most cases, from cardinals by adding “th”: “In the survey the schools ranked fourth, ninth, sixteenth, and thirty-seventh.” The smaller numbers have special ordinal forms by themselves and in combination with numbers over twenty: “First, second, and third prizes go to those holding the fifty-first, one hundred and second, and thirteenth tickets. Those are the ticket holders for prizes one, two, and three.” Note that compound numbers change only their last element into an ordinal form: “The one-hundredth and one hundred and first people to call get $5.” WRONG: “I served in the One Hundredth and First Regiment.”

Cardinals function like all other nouns except that they are all
plural
—except “one” and “zero.” When numbers are treated as words in themselves, however, they can be singular or plural: “The mathematician put a ‘one’ in the first column of the table and three ‘twos’ in the next area.” Here the numbers stand for countable written forms or marks on a page, and therefore they can have
number.

In most formal English writing, numbers under 100 are spelled out. This is particularly true of
ordinal numbers,
which are usually spelled out no matter how long they are. However, formal business, economic, scientific, and other
styles
permit (even encourage) showing most
cardinal numbers
in figures.

Ordinals vary depending on preferences; but generally there is more tolerance for terms like “101st” in scientific, military and some other styles than in other writing, where such figures are seen as errors. Newspapers and some other space-constrained publications favor figures because they are shorter, more visible, and more easily skimmed. Almost all styles encourage the use of “one,” however, instead of or along with “I,” which can be confused with the letter “el”: “Please send me 1 (one) copy of the album.”

Whatever style you adopt, be sure to be consistent within any
sentence
or
paragraph,
using all figures or all spelled-out numbers so that readers do not have to shift expectations. RIGHT: “I saw four birds and one hundred and six insects.” WRONG: “There are ninety-six chapters and 102 verses.”

Note that spelled-out cardinal numbers include
hyphens
for all numbers over twenty and below one hundred that are compounds of two or more numbers: “Twenty-one bears and ninety-six cougars gathered by the pond.” Ordinals are hyphenated only when they modify a noun: “That is twenty first; it is the twenty-first time you have used that example.” Longer ordinal compounds are also hyphenated in their last element only when used as
adjectives
with a
noun
present: “I see the one hundred twenty-first flag; it is one hundred twenty-first in line.”

When numbers begin sentences, they should always be spelled out: “Nineteen sixty-five was a strange year.” Although some newspapers and other publications concerned with space violate this
rule,
most styles observe it
since initial figures in a sentence are hard to place—are they subjects,
list
numbers,
dates,
note numbers, or something else? Spelled-out numbers reduce this ambiguity and
clarify
writing. Another way to clarify such a sentence is to revise it, moving the number from the initial position: “What a strange year 1965 was!” See
revision.

Figures are mandatory in certain circumstances, however: dates (“November 23, 1963”), addresses (“32 Barrow St., Apt. 8B, New York, NY 10014-4927”), phone numbers (“212-699-9999”), and times (“6
A.M.,”
but note that spelled-out numbers are fine without “
A.M
.” or
“P.M.”
or with “o’clock”: “It was four in the afternoon.” “I had an appointment for four o’clock this afternoon”). Figures are also required with larger or very exact amounts of money (“$6.82 million,” “£3,475”), decimals and
fractions
(“6.9387,” “¾?”), percentages (“36.9%,” “42 percent”), sports or competitive scores (“Bears win 21-10!” “The pupil scored 97 on the test”), and parts of plays and books (“chapter 14,” “Act 3,” “scene 2”).

O, Oh.
Distinguish carefully between “?” and “oh.” The first is used mainly when directly addressing a revered or worshipped figure: “? Great One, grant your blessings and favors on us, your humble villagers.” It acts as an
adjective
in that it stands directly before the word or words it
modifies
or evokes, but it is normally
capitalized
wherever it appears in a sentence to indicate reverence or solemnity, and it is not followed by any
punctuation
: “Hear us, O judge.”

The
interjection
“oh” can appear anywhere in a sentence to indicate surprise or exclamation: “Oh, it’s raining!” “It’s raining, but, oh, I wanted to eat outside!” Since “oh” is an interjected part of a sentence, it is usually set off by
commas,
as in the examples. It is not normally capitalized unless it appears as the first word of a sentence or stands alone: “Oh! A mouse!”

Object.
In sentences with
transitive verbs
in the
active voice,
the
subject
of the sentence performs some action on a thing or person. That thing or person is said to be the “object” of the verb and to be in the
objective case
(also called accusative case).

There is no special form for the objective case for
nouns,
but
pronouns
change form (see
declension
): “The soldier shot the prisoner; the bullet hit him.” In the example both “prisoner” and “him” are objects of the active, transitive
verbs
“shot”
and
“hit.”
While “prisoner” is in the objective case, it is indistinguishable from the normal, ordinary, or
nominative
case of the word. “Him,” however, is an inflected, or changed, form of “he” used for the objective case of this pronoun. See
inflection
and
case.