The names for the parts of a sentence are simpler than most people remember. These ten questions cover the ones that come up constantly.
English grammar has a reputation for being difficult that it does not entirely deserve. Much of the difficulty comes from terminology imported from Latin, a language built quite differently, and from rules invented in the eighteenth century by writers who thought English needed tidying. The parts of speech themselves are a small, useful set, and almost everyone uses them correctly long before learning what they are called. Punctuation is younger than the words. Early manuscripts ran text together without gaps or stops, and the marks arrived gradually as printing spread and silent reading replaced reading aloud. The semicolon has a known inventor and a known date. The apostrophe, which causes more public argument than any other mark, was doing two unrelated jobs almost from the start.
Every question in this quiz is listed below with its correct answer and the reasoning behind it. Play first if you would rather not see the answers — or read through as a study sheet.
Play it insteadAnswer: D. A noun
Why: English marks them mainly with determiners and plural endings. French and German add grammatical gender, which English lost after the Norman period.
Answer: C. The semicolon
Why: The Venetian printer Aldus Manutius introduced it in 1494. It marks a pause longer than a comma but shorter than a full stop.
Answer: B. A verb
Why: It can also modify an adjective or another adverb. The -ly ending covers only some of them, since "fast", "well" and "soon" are adverbs too.
Answer: A. Omitted letters
Why: Its other main job is showing possession, as in "the dog's bowl". The two uses collide in "its" and "it's", which is where most errors happen.
Answer: D. ball
Why: The direct object receives the action of the verb. English signals it by position in the sentence, while Latin and Russian use case endings instead.
Answer: C. Joins words, phrases or clauses
Why: "And", "but" and "or" are coordinating and link equals. "Because" and "although" are subordinating and make one clause depend on another.
Answer: B. beneath
Why: Prepositions mark relations of place, time or direction. English has only a few dozen, and they are among the oldest words in the language.
Answer: A. Before the final "and" in a list
Why: It takes its name from Oxford University Press house style. Its defenders point to lists whose meaning changes without it.
Answer: D. A word standing in for a noun
Why: English pronouns still distinguish subject from object, as in "he" and "him". Ordinary nouns lost that distinction centuries ago.
Answer: C. Subject, verb, object
Why: Subject-object-verb is at least as common worldwide, and is the pattern of Japanese, Turkish and Hindi. Word order in English does the work that endings do elsewhere.
Parts of Speech and Punctuation Marks has 10 questions and takes about 6 minutes to finish. It is rated Easy and sits in our Language & Words category.
Each of the 10 correct answers adds 10 XP, up to 100 XP for a clean run. Wrong answers cost you nothing, and your full question-by-question review is shown at the end.
Yes. All 10 questions carry a written explanation of why the correct answer is right, so the quiz works as a study sheet as well as a test.
Yes, as often as you like. The questions and the answer options are reshuffled on each run, and you can use Practice Mistakes afterwards to retry only the ones you missed. No account is needed to play.
Every quiz on QuizKite is researched, written and fact-checked by hand against reliable references, with an explanation for each answer. Read our full Editorial Policy to learn more about our content standards.
Roots, scripts and the names for things you already do with language.
Which language has the most native speakers worldwide?
Abjads, syllabaries and alphabets, and the very different ways writing can encode speech.
Which writing system uses characters that mostly stand for units of meaning rather than…
Ten everyday words with a Latin, Greek or Arabic ancestor hiding inside them.
The word "muscle" comes from a Latin word meaning what?
Scripts, families and the odd language that refuses to fit anywhere at all.
Which script is used to write Hindi, Marathi and Nepali?
The parts of speech and punctuation marks people use daily and rarely name.
A word such as "heavy" or "blue", which describes a noun, is called what?
Ten common phrases traced back to the law, the navy, the theatre and the hat trade.
To "read the riot act" refers to what?