13. Glossary of Grammatical Terms Used in This Book

This glossary exists purely for quick lookup — you do not need to memorise these terms to answer error-spotting questions correctly (see FAQ Q4), but recognising them speeds up how quickly you can talk yourself through a sentence.

• Antecedent — the noun a pronoun refers back to.
• Article — the words "a," "an," and "the," used to mark whether a noun is specific or general.
• Auxiliary verb — a "helping" verb (is, has, will, did) that combines with a main verb to form tense, voice, or mood.
• Case — the form a pronoun takes depending on its grammatical role (subject, object, or possessive).
• Clause — a group of words containing its own subject and verb.
• Collective noun — a singular-form noun referring to a group (team, committee, jury).
• Collocation — a fixed, conventional pairing of words, such as a specific verb with a specific preposition.
• Comparative — the form of an adjective or adverb used to compare exactly two things (better, faster).
• Correlative conjunction — a paired conjunction, such as "either...or" or "not only...but also."
• Countable noun — a noun that can be individually counted and pluralised (candidate, mark, chair).
• Dangling modifier — an opening modifying phrase with no logical subject in the main clause to attach to.
• Finite verb — a verb form that shows tense and agrees with a subject (as opposed to a gerund or infinitive).
• Gerund — the "-ing" form of a verb used as a noun (revising, waiting).
• Indefinite pronoun — a pronoun not referring to a specific person or thing (each, everyone, anybody).
• Infinitive — the base form of a verb usually preceded by "to" (to revise, to wait).
• Modifier — a word, phrase, or clause that describes or limits another element in a sentence.
• Parallelism — the principle that joined or listed elements should share the same grammatical form.
• Participial phrase — a phrase built around a present or past participle, functioning as a modifier.
• Preposition — a word showing the relationship between a noun/pronoun and another part of the sentence (on, in, at, with).
• Pronoun — a word that stands in for a noun (he, they, which, who).
• Quantifier — a word indicating amount or number (many, few, much, little).
• Redundancy — the use of two or more words that unnecessarily repeat the same meaning.
• Subject — the noun or pronoun performing the action of, or being described by, the verb.
• Subject-verb agreement — the rule that a verb's number (singular/plural) must match its subject.
• Superlative — the form of an adjective or adverb used to compare three or more things (best, fastest).
• Tense — the verb form showing when an action takes place (past, present, future) and its completeness or duration.
• Uncountable noun — a noun treated as a mass rather than individually counted (information, furniture, advice).
• Voice (grammatical) — whether the subject performs the action (active voice) or receives it (passive voice).
• Subjunctive mood — a verb form used for hypothetical, wished-for, or contrary-to-fact situations ("If I were you," "I wish I had").
• Reported (indirect) speech — restating what someone said without quoting them directly, typically shifting tense and pronouns.
• Determiner — a word placed before a noun to clarify what it refers to (articles, possessives, quantifiers, and demonstratives such as "this/that").
• Relative clause — a clause introduced by a relative pronoun (who, which, that) or relative adverb (when, where, why) that describes a preceding noun.