Not just any lake, but the one named Lake Tahoe. Not just any woman, but one specific woman: Hilary Clinton, for example. Proper nouns, on the other hand, are the specific names given to only one thing. They can refer, at least potentially, to any woman, any lake, any car. All my sentence examples above use generic, common nouns: woman, lake, car, ball, green. Common nouns are, as might be expected, ordinary naming words, usually somewhat generic. But I find that people frequently have trouble with this next concept. I’ll throw in one other tidbit about nouns, just for free, though it has nothing to do with determining whether or not you have a complete sentence as opposed to a fragment. There is still no clue as to what it’s talking about. “Is lovely, pale, luminescent lime green” does not magically transform this into a sentence. Clearly, this is a fragmentary thought, and that’s why such phrases are labeled “fragments.” Nor does it help to pile on more words.

“Is green” doesn’t become a sentence even though it contains the noun “green,” because it doesn’t tell you what is green.

Just sticking in a noun doesn’t make a string of words into a sentence, no matter how long the string of words becomes. So, to have a sentence, there must be a naming word (noun) that lets the reader know what the sentence is about. Of course, it certainly could form the subject of a different sentence, such as “Green is my favorite color.” While “green” is also a name (noun), it is not what the sentence is about so it cannot function as the subject of this sentence. “Ball” is a name (noun) for a round object. For example, take the sentence “The ball is green.” This sentence is about a ball. Other, less tangible things can also be nouns, such as emotions or ideas.Įvery sentence must be about something or, to put it another way, it must have a subject. “Woman” is the English name for a female human, while “lake” names a medium-sized body of non-flowing water and “car” names a type of vehicle. For example, “woman,” “lake,” and “car” are all nouns. “Noun” is the technical term for words that name something, most often a person, a place, or a thing. If you don’t have those ingredients, then you don’t have a sentence. It must express a complete thought, however brief. Well, you came to the right place for a simple, no-nonsense explanation.Įvery sentence must have a subject, as well as a verb which tells what the subject is doing or being. But how can you tell? What sets apart a real, honest-to-goodness sentence from a phrase or a fragment? Maybe your sentence wasn’t really a sentence, after all. Has your word processing program ever advised you to reconsider a sentence you just wrote? Have you ever sat and puzzled over it in frustration, wondering what it was so upset about?

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