Common Nouns A common noun is the word used for a class of person, place or thing. Examples:

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car man bridge town water metal ammonia Note: Common nouns are capitalized only when they start a sentence. Common nouns are further classified into:

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Abstract nouns – things you cannot see or touch (e.g., bravery, joy) Collective nouns – words to describe groups (e.g., team, choir) Compound nouns – nouns made up of more than one word (e.g., courtmartial, pickpocket, water bottle) Concrete nouns – things you can see or touch (e.g., tree, cloud) Non-countable nouns (mass nouns) – things you cannot count (e.g., food, music) Gender-specific nouns – words which are definitely male or female (e.g., vixen, actress) Verbal nouns – nouns derived from verbs (e.g., a building, an attack) Gerunds – nouns that represent actions (e.g., running fast, guessing a number) Proper Nouns A proper noun is the name of a person, place or thing (i.e., its own name). A proper noun always starts with a capital letter.

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Michael Africa Peking Dayton Peace Accord United Nations The Tower of London Uncle George (Uncle is written with a capital letter because it is part of his name.) My favourite auntie is Auntie Sally. (In this example, the first auntie is a common noun, but the second Auntie is part of a proper noun.)

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The Red Lion See also: Capital Letters for Proprer Nouns but Not Common Nouns Collective Nouns A collective noun is the word used for a group of people or things. Examples:

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Choir Team Jury Shoal Cabinet (of ministers) Regiment The big question with collective nouns is whether they should be treated as singular or plural. The answer is: They can be treated as singular or plural depending on the sense of your sentence. This is covered in more depth in the lesson Collective Nouns – Singular or Plural? and in the Beware section on the right of this page. Pronouns

A pronoun is a word used to replace a noun. Pronouns are one of the eight parts of speech which are: adjectives, adverbs conjunctions, interjections, nouns, prepositions, pronouns and verbs. Even though they are classified as a different part of speech to nouns, pronouns are nouns. They always play the role of a noun in a sentence.

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James is the first choice for the post. He has applied for it twice already. (He is a pronoun. In this example, it replaces the proper noun James.) (It is a pronoun. Here, it replaces the common noun post.)

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Some / Who / This (The term pronoun covers lots of words, and all three words above are classified as pronouns. There is whole section dedicated to pronouns.) Gerunds Gerunds) are formed from verbs. They end -ing. They are a type of common noun.

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I love swimming. (swimming – the name of an activity; it is formed from the verb to swim.) Thinking is required to solve this problem. (thinking – the name of an activity; it is formed from the verb to think.) Gerunds are different from other nouns because they can take an object or be modified with an adverb.

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I love swimming this lake. Thinking laterally is required to solve this problem. Compound Nouns Compound nouns are nouns made up of two or more words. Some compound nouns are hyphenated. Some are not, and some combine their words to form a single word. (This is covered in the lesson Hyphens in Compound Nouns.)

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Mother-in-law Board of members Court-martial Forget-me-not Manservant Pickpocket Paper-clip