If you’re a native English speaker, there’s an easy trick for remembering whether you should say “look at this picture of my mom and me” or “look at this picture of my mom and I”: Remove the words “my mom and.” Because you wouldn’t say “look at this picture of I,” you also shouldn’t say “a picture of my mom and I.” You can apply this to just about any phrase with potentially confusing pronouns, and it’ll work the same way. For example, because “her went to the store” is incorrect, so is “her and I went to the store” — it’s “she and I went to the store.”

This trick for relying on what sounds right will work best for native speakers who grew up hearing people speak in correct and natural rhythms. To get a bit more technical, we need to distinguish between subjective and objective pronouns. The former refers to the subject of a sentence, while the latter tells us who is performing or receiving an action. I, you, he, she, it, we, you, and they are subjective pronouns, whereas me, you, her, him, it, us, you, and them are objective pronouns. The two types of pronouns are paired with different parts of speech and therefore have different meanings. An objective pronoun (“me”) would follow a preposition such as “with” or “between,” while a subjective pronoun (“I”) is paired with a verb.

To sum things up, if there’s a preposition such as “between” or “with,” the proper phrasing is “between you and me.” That’s because the preposition needs to be followed by an objective pronoun rather than a subjective pronoun. Test this by switching the pronouns. If you say “between we,” it’s clear that you’re using the wrong pronoun.

If you’ve ever pondered this question, allow us to introduce you to the subjunctive. This verb form is used for potential and hypothetical situations, including when wishing for something that doesn’t exist yet.  In these wishful contexts, “were” is the past-tense conjugation of “to be” you’re looking for. Example: “I wish I were covered in kittens” is correct because it’s referring to something that hasn’t actually happened — and, alas, may never happen.

If and when such a situation should come to pass, however, “was” is correct when mentioning it. “I was the happiest person in the world when I was covered in kittens” is the proper phrasing because it’s referring to something that happened rather than a hypothetical situation. For a mnemonic, when something “has” happened, the matching verb is “was.”

Learning the subjunctive comes with a downside: realizing how often it’s misused, including in songs, movies, and other pop culture. Singing along to Skee-Lo’s “I Wish” is ever-so-slightly less enjoyable once you’re aware that the lyric should be “I wish I were a little bit taller,” but it’s a catchy tune nevertheless. At least we can take solace in the fact that Pink Floyd never sang, “How I wish, how I wish you was here.”

Welcome to another refresher course in English grammar. Today we’re reviewing the parts of speech — the categories words are assigned based on their function. There are eight parts of speech, some of which have only a few member words, while others contain thousands of words. And thanks to the many quirks of the English language, some words operate as multiple parts of speech. Let’s review the basics of these language building blocks. 

Tip: For memory aid, use the mnemonic “PAPA N VIC.” It may sound like an Italian takeout joint, but it stands for pronoun, adjective, preposition, adverb, noun, verb, interjection, conjunction. 

When you first learned about the fundamentals of English grammar in elementary school, this is probably where your teacher started. A noun is a word that names a person, place, concept, or object — basically, any type of “thing.” For example, “cat,” “New York City,” “library,” “Taylor Swift,” and “optimism” are nouns. A proper noun is a name or a title for a specific thing — “New York City” and “Taylor Swift” are proper nouns. You can usually spot a proper noun because it’s always capitalized (unless it’s a specific stylized brand name, such as iPhone). A common noun is a generic name for a given thing: “cat,” “library,” and “optimism,” for example.

Pronouns are misunderstood a lot these days, but as a part of speech, a pronoun is a word that replaces a specific noun when the reader or listener already knows which noun is being referred to. It’s both shorthand and a way of making writing and speech less repetitive. It might go something like this: “Megan said I could borrow her car, but she already lent it to her brother.” The pronouns “she/her” act as a stand-in for “Megan,” and “it” stands in for “car.” 

When using pronouns, it’s important to be clear what they’re standing in for. Take this example: “I saw Megan and Claire earlier, and she said I could borrow her car. Because the first clause of the sentence contains two names, it’s unclear which name “she/her” is replacing. It would be more clear to say, “I saw Megan and Claire earlier, and Megan said I could borrow her car.” Now we know that “her” is a stand-in for Megan, not Claire.

There are an almost unlimited number of nouns in the English language, but there’s a much smaller set of pronouns. Personal pronouns refer to people: I, you, he, she, we, they, me, him, her, us, and them. “It” is also considered a personal pronoun, but it stands in for non-people nouns. Interrogative pronouns introduce questions in which a noun is the answer: what, which, who, whom, and whose. Demonstrative pronouns (this, that, these, and those) are used to indicate something is separate from something else. We can use both interrogative and demonstrative pronouns together: “Whose keys are these? Those are Jose’s keys.”

Verbs are words that designate actions (nouns and pronouns perform these actions). A verb might also refer to a feeling or state of being, such as “to love” or “to be.”. When the verb has the word “to” paired with it, that’s the infinitive form; it changes form based on the subject (the noun or pronoun performing the action) and the tense (past, present, future). For example: to run, you run, I ran, we were running, they will run. 

That’s just a sampling of how to use a regular verb, but things get very complicated with irregular verbs, such as “go” (with the past tense of “went”).

Adjectives are words that describe nouns. In the phrase “big house on a tall hill overlooking a blue lake,” “big,” “tall,” and “blue” are adjectives. They provide more description and context than the noun by itself. When multiple words work together to describe a noun, we call that an adjective phrase (for example: “too big to fail”). 

Articles (the words “a,” “an,” and “the”) are considered adjectives because they pair with nouns to help describe them. For example, “the apple” (meaning a specific one) is an important distinction from “an apple” (meaning any apple).

Similar to adjectives, adverbs are descriptive words, but instead of describing nouns, they describe verbs, adjectives, and other adverbs. In other words, they describe a way of doing something, rather than a thing itself. Take this example: “The cat ran very quickly across the room.” “Very” and “quickly” are both adverbs — “quickly” describes how the cat ran, and “very” quantifies how quickly the cat ran. Words that end in “-ly” are usually adverbs, but not all adverbs end in “-ly.” Words in the latter subgroup include “never,” “often,” “sometimes,” “again,” “meanwhile,” “instead,” “better,” and “best” — just to list a few.

Prepositions articulate the relationship between other words in the sentence; examples include “up,” “against,” “in,” and “below.” Most frequently, prepositions describe direction, time, location, or space, though they can be more abstract than that. They generally identify where something is or when something happened. For example: “I left my jacket at the theater after we saw a movie.” In this sentence, “at” describes where the jacket was left and “after” describes when it was left there.  

Editor’s note: Don’t believe the rule about not ending your sentences with prepositions. It’s old-fashioned guidance, and it’s now perfectly acceptable.  

If the Schoolhouse Rock! song “Conjunction Junction” isn’t playing in your head, we’ll elaborate. Conjunctions are connective words such as “and,” “but,” or “if.” They make it possible to write or say complex sentences that express multiple ideas more elegantly than writing them out as separate sentences. Consider this example: “I like cats. I like dogs. I don’t like birds.”

While it’s technically grammatically correct to express your ideas this way, it’s not the most efficient or refined way to do so, and it comes across as quite choppy. Using conjunctions, you could express the same sentiment this way: “I like cats and dogs, but I don’t like birds.”

Wow! We’ve reached the eighth part of speech: interjections.  An interjection is an abrupt remark or exclamation made to express a sudden feeling, such as the “Wow!” at the beginning of this paragraph. Other examples include “Ouch!” “Yikes!” “Oh my!” and “Oops!” Interjections can describe negative or positive emotions, and in general there aren’t a lot of rules about how to use them (except, perhaps, to do it sparingly). An interjection word is usually accompanied by an exclamation point, but it’s not required. You might want to treat them a bit like pronouns, in that they require some context. An interjection doesn’t make a lot of sense without explaining why you suddenly came to that emotion.

He spoke quietly. They ran quickly. The last word in each of these two sentences is an adverb, a word that modifies a verb. We know that a complete sentence has a subject (a noun or a pronoun) and a verb, but adverbs are another part of speech that serves to add color and nuance to clauses. They’re a handy writer’s tool used to describe an action or give more detail about a verb. We’re usually able to spot adverbs easily, as most end in the letters “–ly.”

This is not always the case, though — a flat adverb is a descriptive word that’s missing that “-ly” suffix. Flat adverbs often look identical to their adjective counterparts, and both are used to modify or describe another part of speech. However, they differ in usage: Adverbs describe a verb instead of a noun. It seems simple enough, but many adverbs and adjectives are interchangeable.

Take, for example, the word “fast.” It can be used as both an adjective and an adverb. To use it as an adjective, you might say, “She was on the fast track to success.” In this example, the adjective “fast” describes the noun “track.” When “fast” is used as a flat adverb, though, the usage of the word changes. While still denoting quickness, in the phrase “she ran fast,” the flat adverb “fast” describes the speed of the verb “ran.”

There are, of course, regular adverb synonyms (“quickly,” “swiftly,” “hurriedly”) for the flat adverb “fast.” Each of these conveys a slightly different tone than the flat adverb, which helps explain why there are so many more regular adverbs than flat. If the goal is to add description, it’s usually worth using the most powerful word at your disposal.

The letter “a” is the shortest and first word alphabetically in the dictionary. It’s also a part of speech called an article. It joins “an” and “the” in the category as words that pair with nouns — for example, “a dog,” “an apple,” and “the bike.” Then we can insert adjectives and quantifiers to flesh out the noun phrases: “a young dog,” “a lot of apples,” “the green bike.” Seems simple enough. So why is removing the space and turning “a lot” into “alot” such a common mistake?

Let’s first examine what the words mean. The phrase “a lot” means “a large amount.” (For example: “There are a lot of children in the family.”) “Alot” is not a word, but it’s a common misspelling of “a lot,” which should always be written as two words. The words “lots” or “many” can also be used to mean the same thing.

The word “allot,” meanwhile, has an entirely different definition. It’s a verb that means “to apportion a share or task.” (For example: “Each child will be allotted one cookie before bedtime.”) It’s related to the noun “allotment,” which means “the amount of something allocated to a particular person.”

The mistake of “alot” may be a simple typo, but if it’s done on purpose, the confusion likely comes from the words “apart” and “awhile.” These are words. “A part” is a phrase meaning “a piece of,” including the article “a” and the noun “part,” while “apart” is an adverb used to describe things that have been separated. “Awhile” is an adverb that means “for a short time,” and “a while” is a noun phrase meaning “a period of time.”In speech, these distinctions won’t be obvious, but in writing, a missing or misplaced space can change the meaning. Check your articles and “a” words to make sure you’re not piling up a lot of mistakes.