Adjectives as Adverbs, Verb Tense, Punctuation, and Apostrophes

1. Versatile Parts of
Speech
The following examples show that the same word
may have more than one kind of grammatical
office (or function). It is the meaning which we
give to a word in the sentence that determines its
classification as a part of speech.
The chief classes of words thus variously used are:
1) Nouns and adjectives
2) Nouns and verbs
3) Adjectives and adverbs
4) Adjectives and pronouns
5) Adverbs and prepositions

2. Adjectives and
Adverbs
The same word can be used as an
adjective as well as an adverb. Here
are three examples.
Adjective: That is a fast boat.
Adverb: The snow is melting fast.
Adjective: Draw a straight line.
Adverb: The arrow flew straight.
Adjective: Early patrons obtain better
seats.
Adverb: Tom awoke early.

3. Verb Tense
From “Of Morning Glass” by Carol Ann Davis (modified)
Was this the first time that feeling comes, not at all frightening, but familiar to you? Your
understanding of the water and its relation to the body, your being able to held your own
inside the enormous-unimaginable, to dive deep and come up far from where you started:
when does it begin? Will it be the day you stepped off of the last step in the shallow end of
a neighbor’s pool up the street near the river, the water line shifts your vision to divide all
that was in from all that is not in water? Or earlier, when you will walk into the waves out
front — an expression that meant the water of the vast Atlantic Ocean that flows almost to
your doorstep — feel for the first time the relief that there was a thing that is much bigger
than you, enormous in fact? Or the feeling will have its roots in the way your father talked
about the stars that make up the Milky Way, your relation to them mathematical, an infinite
sense of connection among bodies, each floating in its atmosphere.

4. Verb Tense
From “Of Morning Glass” by Carol Ann Davis (modified)
Is this the first time that feeling comes, not at all frightening, but familiar to you? Your
understanding of the water and its relation to the body, your being able to hold your own
inside the enormous-unimaginable, to dive deep and come up far from where you started:
when does it begin? Will it be the day you stepped off of the last step in the shallow end of
a neighbor’s pool up the street near the river, the water line shifts your vision to divide all
that was in from all that is not in water? Or earlier, when you will walk into the waves out
front — an expression that meant the water of the vast Atlantic Ocean that flows almost to
your doorstep — feel for the first time the relief that there was a thing that is much bigger
than you, enormous in fact? Or the feeling will have its roots in the way your father talked
about the stars that make up the Milky Way, your relation to them mathematical, an infinite
sense of connection among bodies, each floating in its atmosphere.

5. Punctuation
From “F. Scott Fitzgerald Blows Into Town” by F. Scott Fitzgerald (modified)
incalculable city what ensued was only one of a thousand success
stories of those gaudy days but it plays a part in my own movie of
New York when I returned six months later the offices of editors and
publishers were open to me impresarios begged plays the movies
panted for screen material to my bewilderment I was adopted not as
a midwesterner not even as a detached observer but as the very
archetype of what New York wanted this statement requires some
account of the metropolis in 1920

6. Punctuation
From “F. Scott Fitzgerald Blows Into Town” by F. Scott Fitzgerald (modified)
Incalculable city! What ensued was only one of a thousand success
stories of those gaudy days, but it plays a part in my own movie of
New York. When I returned six months later, the offices of editors and
publishers were open to me. Impresarios begged plays, the movies
panted for screen material; to my bewilderment, I was adopted not
as a Midwesterner, not even as a detached observer, but as the very
archetype of what New York wanted. This statement requires some
account of the metropolis in 1920.

7. Punctuation
Possible punctuation marks for this exercise include:
an em dash –
a period .
a comma ,
quotation marks “ ”
An exclamation point !
a colon :
an apostrophe ’
or a semicolon ;

8. The Apostrophe
For contractions
and ownership –
not for plural
nouns.

9. Apostrophe Abuse

10. Apostrophe
Abuse

11. Apostrophe
Abuse

12. Apostrophe
Abuse

13. Apostrophe Abuse