Chicago Style Workout 27: Grammar, Part 1

/ June 26, 2018

Sailors stretching on the deck of a ship

Stretch Yourself!

This workout, the first in a series of four on the subject of grammar, focuses on paragraphs 5.1–21 in CMOS 18. Advanced editors might tackle the questions cold; learners can study that section of the Manual before answering the questions.

Subscribers to The Chicago Manual of Style Online may click through to the linked sections of the Manual. (We also offer a 30-day free trial of CMOS Online.)

Note: Dictionaries and style guides sometimes disagree. These questions are designed to test your knowledge of The Chicago Manual of Style, which prefers the dictionary at Merriam-Webster.com. Other style guides may follow a different dictionary.

Now updated to refer and link to the 18th edition.

Chicago Style Workout 27: Grammar, Part 1

1. A common noun may become a proper noun.
2. Sometimes a proper noun may be used as if it were a common noun.
3. In English, all parts of speech have case, which denotes the relationship between a word and other words in a sentence. (Examples of case are nominative and objective.)
4. Most English nouns are either masculine or feminine.
5. Names of companies, institutions, and similar entities are generally treated as collective nouns—and hence are plural in American English.
6. All nouns have distinct singular and plural forms.
7. A noun or pronoun that follows a be-verb and refers to the same thing as the subject is called a predicate nominative.
8. A noun serving as an object of the verb may sometimes come before the verb.
9. A noun serving as the object of a preposition may also be the subject of a verb that follows.
10. The genitive case has many other functions besides showing possession.

 

Photo: War Game Drill on USS Washington [ca. 1910–1915], from the George Grantham Bain Collection, Library of Congress, via Flickr.

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