Namely. The conjunctive adverb “namely” is used to specify relations between clauses.
Names. When things or people have words that identify them as specific individuals, those words are called “names”: “Jan served on the battleship North Carolina sailing in the Pacific and spent leisure time reading War and Peace.” Names of things and people are usually marked in some way to distinguish them from more general nouns—by capitalization or by italics (or both). There are several categories or types of names that are treated somewhat differently.
Personal names are capitalized: “John and Mary are here.” When common nouns are used as personal names, they are capitalized as well: “Father is here, but Mother is in Detroit.” Common nouns that refer to relatives are not capitalized when they stand alone, but are capitalized when they have personal names added to them: “My uncle is dead, but Aunt Mary is still with us.” Non-English names are sometimes not capitalized, particularly parts of last names: “Ludwig van Beethoven’s symphonies were being played.” Honorific titles are also capitalized when parts of names, but not prepositions, conjunctions, or articles in them: “Prince Joseph of Holland and the Low Countries.” See capitalization and specific languages.
Place names are capitalized, including common nouns that are part of the names: “Mount Hood and Lake Zots are in Oregon State. The state of Oregon has Hood and other mountains, as well as Zots and other lakes.” Prepositions, conjunctions, and articles that are parts of place names are not capitalized: “Lake of the Woods.” Check non-English words in dictionaries or other reference works to determine which parts of them are capitalized in place names. See also capitalization.
Vessels and vehicles of various kinds, along with machines, brand names or models or products, and the like, can have names that follow the capitalization rules of personal and place names: “I took my Toshiba on the Learjet and on the train.” Named ships, planes, and other vehicles and vessels have capitalized and italicized names: “We sailed on the Queen Mary, then flew on the Spirit of Los Angeles, a DC-10.” See also italics.
Literary, artistic, architectural, engineering, and other products of human endeavor can have names. Such names and titles are usually capitalized, and they are italicized if they are the result of individual effort. “I was reading Pride and Prejudice in the shadow of the Boulder Dam.” As in most names, prepositions, conjunctions, and articles are not capitalized in such names unless they are the first word of the name. In some languages names of works have only initial capitals unless they include other words that are capitalized in their own right (e.g., Russian). Check relevant reference books to be sure. See italics and capitalization.
Governments, companies, religions, associations, languages, and other things or groups of people can also be named specifically enough to warrant capitalization: “The bill on English as the national language went to Congress, sponsored by Republicans and the National Association of Scholars, as well as by the Baptist Synod of Arkansas.”
Almost anything can be named, and almost all such names merit capitalization if not italicization.
N.B. This abbreviation of the Latin words “Notabene” is “N.B.” It means note well or pay attention. Neither the abbreviation nor the Latin phrase is welcome in most modern, standard writing.
Negatives. Words that convey some sense of “no” or “not” to a sentence are said to be “negatives.” The sentences in which they occur are negative sentences: “I will not do it.”
The most common negative words are “no,” “not,” “never,” “nothing,” “nobody,” “none,” and “no one.” Their presence in a sentence usually signals that it is negative. Note that negatives are frequently contracted into other words, particularly verbs: “I won’t do it.” Even though the full word “not” is not visible in this sentence, the sentence is still negative. See contractions.
There are quite a few common mistakes that are made with negative words. The most common are misplacement of negatives (see misplaced modifiers) and double negatives.
Just as it is easy to allow modifiers to slide into positions in sentences in which it is less than clear what the modifiers refer to, so negatives (a kind of modifier) often pop up in the wrong or less than helpful places. WRONG: “The class reads never the books I’d want.” The example is unclear about who reads or wants what and when. BETTER: “The class never reads the books I’d want them to read.”
Only one negative word can occur in a phrase or clause: “to nobody” “give it to nobody.” When two negatives appear in the same phrase or clause, there is an error. WRONG: “I did not give it to nobody,” “I never gave it to nobody,” “Nobody never gave it to me.” The variations (and the instances of their occurrence) are all but endless. Particularly in longer clauses or phrases, careless writers tend to forget that a negative appeared earlier and that another is out of place later. Just as common are the kinds of errors in the examples, evidently because writers forget that “nobody,” “never,” and “nothing” are negatives that can’t be doubled in a clause or phrase.
To avoid this all too common mistake, proofread and revise with care, looking especially for the longer negatives in combination with each other or shorter negatives. When you find mistakes like those in the examples, change one of the words to positive form: “I did not give it to anybody,” “I gave it to nobody,” “I never gave it to anybody,” “Nobody ever gave it to me.” Sometimes, as with the last clause in the example, a positive rephrasing is not possible for one of the negatives: “nobody” can’t become “anybody” or anything else and make sense with the rest of the clause. Larger rewrites are then necessary: “Nobody ever gave me anything,” or something of the sort, depending on what you mean. See revision. Never use the negative contraction “ain’t” in standard English statements.
Remember that some words can be made to have a negative sense without becoming negatives and thus are not subject to the rules of double negation. This happens when “negative” prefixes or suffixes are added to the beginnings or ends of words: “nonstarter.” The example is a word that can appear with true negatives in phrases, clauses, or sentences because its “negative” sense is merely a connotation or suggestion of the particle added to it. It is not, in other words, strictly speaking a negative: “Nonstarters never get going.” The example is correct. WRONG: “Nonstarters never do nothing.” RIGHT: “Nonstarters never do anything.”
Neither, neither … nor. Remember that the negative adjectives and conjunctions “neither” and “neither … nor” cannot be used with a second negative in the same sentence. WRONG: “Neither one of them never arrived.” RIGHT: “Neither one of them ever arrived.”
Neither … nor. See neither.
Nevertheless. This conjunctive adverb suggests reservations in the relationship between clauses.
Nobody. “Nobody” is a singular indefinite pronoun: “Nobody is home.” WRONG: “Nobody are responsible for quality.” See pronoun.
Nominative. Words that function as the subjects or subject complements (predicate nouns or adjectives) of sentences are in the nominative case. Such words are not marked from their normal or main form, which is in fact the form that “names” (or “nominates”) the basic form of the word from which others are made. The nominative is also called the subjective case, since its main function is to serve as subject or subject complement.
None, no one. Do not confuse these words, both of which are usually singular. “None” is an indefinite pronoun that means not one: “None of the executives travels often.” “No one” is an indefinite pronoun that means single person: “No one travels more than the chairperson.”
Nonrestrictive clause. Clauses that appear to be added to sentences for supplementary, nonessential explanation are called “nonrestrictive.”
They are set off in the sentence by commas: “The actor, who drove a Ferrari, was the star of a soap opera.” Here the information about the car the soap opera star drives is considered ancillary, additional, and therefore nonrestrictive. The “who” clause is thus set off in commas. If the commas are omitted, the meaning of the sentence changes to suggest that more than one actor is being talked about, and the only way to distinguish which one is the soap opera star is to note who drives a Ferrari. This “who” clause is then a restrictive clause and is not set off in commas.
How can you tell if a clause is nonrestrictive or restrictive? There is no hard-and-fast rule. However, the essential question is whether the main action or condition of the sentence is understandable without the clause. In the example, the actor is a soap opera star (and we know it) whether or not we know what kind of car the actor drives. It might be interesting that it’s a snappy sports car; but it does nothing to change our understanding of the main point being conveyed: the actor is a soap opera star. We might also learn in nonrestrictive clauses that the actor is tall, blond, and speaks fluent French. All those points would not change the basic fact of the actor’s starring role.
When the commas are taken out of the sentence, the nature of the clause changes. Somehow we can grasp the identity of the soap opera star only by knowing what kind of car the star drives. Apparently other actors and stars drive other cars, and that is what sets them apart from the soap opera star. The information is essential to understanding the main point of the sentence and is therefore part of a restrictive clause.
Because punctuation varies with the type of clause, it is important to understand and master this abstract grammatical category. Without good comprehension of it, you are prone to make errors that might embarrass you.
Besides punctuation, you must also consider proper pronouns when writing clauses that might be restrictive or nonrestrictive. It is wrong to begin nonrestrictive adjectival clauses (modifying nouns or noun phrases) with “that.” WRONG: “The building, that is standing in ruins, is old.” RIGHT: “The building, which is standing in ruins, is old” or “The building that is standing in ruins is old.” The examples show that nonrestrictive adjectival clauses must begin with “which” or some other relative pronoun. The choice of pronoun is an additional signal to the reader that the information in the clause is not as important as other statements in the sentence and is therefore nonrestrictive.
Nonrestrictive phrase. The same punctuation rules that apply to nonrestrictive clauses and restrictive clauses are in force for prepositional phrases, participial, and infinitive phrases: nonrestrictive phrases are set off with commas, while restrictive phrases are not.
Here are some examples of nonrestrictive and restrictive phrases: “The purpose of the work, to elucidate literature, was well served.” The infinitive phrase “to elucidate literature” is set off in commas here because it does not contribute to the main point being made by the writer. One could equally well decide to use commas here because the phrase is a sort of interjection or aside to the reader, restating what is assumed to be known, the work’s purpose. Dashes or parentheses might also have been used to set off this phrase, depending on the degree of emphasis one wanted to accord it.
“The dog, tied to the tree, could not chase the squirrel.” The participial phrase “tied to the tree” can also be seen as a phrase in apposition, adding nonessential information to the main sense of the sentence. In either case, as appositional or nonrestrictive phrase, the point is that being tied to the tree is not the cause of the dog’s being unable to chase the squirrel, or the writer has chosen not to emphasize that possible reason for the dog’s inactivity. Removing the commas would suggest either that being tied to the tree kept the dog from chasing or, more grammatically, that other dogs not tied to the tree also couldn’t chase the squirrel, just as the one tied to the tree can’t. See appositive.
“Rover, along with the rest of the dogs, ran off.” Here the nonrestrictive phrase is prepositional. The choice of this sentence structure leads the reader to assume that the writer wants to call attention to Rover and thus has put Rover in the first position in the sentence. One could have made the same statement with slightly different emphasis by saying, “Along with the rest of the dogs, Rover ran off.” The nonrestrictive phrase is still marked by a comma, which would also be necessary because the prepositional phrase now starts the sentence. In either case, it is essential only to understand that Rover ran off, and it is only of tangential interest that the rest of the dogs did so.
Not, not only … but. See negative and correlative conjunction.
Nothing. Negative relative pronoun. “Nothing” is singular in most usages and cannot appear in a sentence that is already negated. WRONG: “Nothing never happens.” RIGHT: “Nothing ever happens.” See negative and double negative.
Not only … but. See not.
Noun. Words that name things or people, in the very broadest sense, are called “nouns”: “dog,” “house,” “nurse,” “flower,” “egret.”
Nouns can function in dozens of ways in sentences, as subjects, as objects, and in many other categories. Nouns have number—they can be singular when referring to one thing or person, or they can be plural when naming more than one. In the plural most nouns change form, adding “s.” Nouns also have gender, indicating whether the person or thing they refer to is male or female in biological fact or analogical imagining. Finally, nouns also have case, which names the role they play in a sentence: nominative for subjects or subject complements (predicate nouns)’, objective case for objects of verbs, prepositions, and so on; possessive for ownership forms, usually marked with an apostrophe and “s” or just an apostrophe.
Nouns that are used as names of individual things or people are called “proper nouns” and are usually capitalized to indicate their special function: “John,” “Mary,” “Ivan,” “Titanic,” “Blue,” and “Smith.” See capitalization.
Nouns agree with verbs, pronouns, adjectives, and other words when they need to—when plurals must match plurals, masculines must refer to masculines, feminines must refer to feminines, and so on. See agreement. The gerund (“ing” form) of verbs can function as nouns: “Swimming is relaxing.”
Noun clause. When nouns, verbs, and other words are combined into clauses, they can play any role in a sentence that a noun can play: “What you are looking for is right there.” The noun clause “what you are looking for” is the subject in this sentence, though it could just as easily be an object of an active verb (“I see what you are looking for”), an object for a preposition (“I attribute that to what you are looking for”), or a predicate noun (subject complement): “This is what you are looking for.”
Noun clauses are usually begun with one of the relative pronouns: “that,” “what,” “whatever,” “which,” “whichever,” “who,” “whoever,” “whom,” “whomever,” or “whose.” Such words as “how,” “when,” “where,” “whether,” or “why” can also start noun clauses: “I don’t see how you can do that.” In this example “how you can do that” is the object of the verb “see.”
Noun phrase. Nouns plus any words that modify them are noun phrases: “the sleeping yellow lion.” Like noun clauses, noun phrases can play any role in a sentence that a noun can—subject, object, or predicate noun: “The sleeping yellow lion rolled over.” “The hunter shot the sleeping yellow lion.” “The zookeeper offered meat to the sleeping yellow lion.” “Where is the sleeping yellow lion?” In the examples, the noun phrase “sleeping yellow lion” operates, in turn, as subject, object, object of preposition, and subject complement (predicate noun). See also modifier. All other functions of nouns are possible for noun phrases, from apposition to verbalization.
n’t. These letters and their apostrophe are often used to form contractions of negative verbs (combined with a shortened “not”): “isn’t,” “hadn’t,” “couldn’t.” Like all such contractions, these forms normally do not appear in standard English writing.
Number. Words are said to have “number” because they indicate whether one or more than one thing or person is doing something. When one person or thing is involved, the number is singular; more than one person or thing is plural. Both nouns and verbs show number by changing form (see declension and conjugation), usually by adding or dropping “5”: “One dog lies in the shade of one tree.” “Many dogs lie in the shade of many trees.” Nouns must agree with verbs in number—singular subjects require singular verbs (see agreement). WRONG: “One dog lie … many dogs lies.” Pronouns also should agree with nouns in number: “Many dogs pant, and I hear them.” WRONG: “Many dogs pant, and I hear it.”
Numbers. Numbers exist in two different forms and styles, from a grammatical point of view. They are spelled-out words (“twenty-one”) or figures (“21”), and they are cardinal (essentially nouns like the first example given) or ordinal (adjectival forms like “twenty-first” or “21st”).
Ordinals suggest ranking or ordering of things, while cardinals denote quantity or count in itself: “Twenty-one is the twenty-first number.” “‘A’ is one letter of twenty-six; it is the first in the alphabet.” Ordinals are formed, in most cases, from cardinals by adding “th”: “In the survey the schools ranked fourth, ninth, sixteenth, and thirty-seventh.” The smaller numbers have special ordinal forms by themselves and in combination with numbers over twenty: “First, second, and third prizes go to those holding the fifty-first, one hundred and second, and thirteenth tickets. Those are the ticket holders for prizes one, two, and three.” Note that compound numbers change only their last element into an ordinal form: “The one-hundredth and one hundred and first people to call get $5.” WRONG: “I served in the One Hundredth and First Regiment.”
Cardinals function like all other nouns except that they are all plural—except “one” and “zero.” When numbers are treated as words in themselves, however, they can be singular or plural: “The mathematician put a ‘one’ in the first column of the table and three ‘twos’ in the next area.” Here the numbers stand for countable written forms or marks on a page, and therefore they can have number.
In most formal English writing, numbers under 100 are spelled out. This is particularly true of ordinal numbers, which are usually spelled out no matter how long they are. However, formal business, economic, scientific, and other styles permit (even encourage) showing most cardinal numbers in figures.
Ordinals vary depending on preferences; but generally there is more tolerance for terms like “101st” in scientific, military and some other styles than in other writing, where such figures are seen as errors. Newspapers and some other space-constrained publications favor figures because they are shorter, more visible, and more easily skimmed. Almost all styles encourage the use of “one,” however, instead of or along with “I,” which can be confused with the letter “el”: “Please send me 1 (one) copy of the album.”
Whatever style you adopt, be sure to be consistent within any sentence or paragraph, using all figures or all spelled-out numbers so that readers do not have to shift expectations. RIGHT: “I saw four birds and one hundred and six insects.” WRONG: “There are ninety-six chapters and 102 verses.”
Note that spelled-out cardinal numbers include hyphens for all numbers over twenty and below one hundred that are compounds of two or more numbers: “Twenty-one bears and ninety-six cougars gathered by the pond.” Ordinals are hyphenated only when they modify a noun: “That is twenty first; it is the twenty-first time you have used that example.” Longer ordinal compounds are also hyphenated in their last element only when used as adjectives with a noun present: “I see the one hundred twenty-first flag; it is one hundred twenty-first in line.”
When numbers begin sentences, they should always be spelled out: “Nineteen sixty-five was a strange year.” Although some newspapers and other publications concerned with space violate this rule, most styles observe it since initial figures in a sentence are hard to place—are they subjects, list numbers, dates, note numbers, or something else? Spelled-out numbers reduce this ambiguity and clarify writing. Another way to clarify such a sentence is to revise it, moving the number from the initial position: “What a strange year 1965 was!” See revision.
Figures are mandatory in certain circumstances, however: dates (“November 23, 1963”), addresses (“32 Barrow St., Apt. 8B, New York, NY 10014-4927”), phone numbers (“212-699-9999”), and times (“6 A.M.,” but note that spelled-out numbers are fine without “A.M.” or “P.M.” or with “o’clock”: “It was four in the afternoon.” “I had an appointment for four o’clock this afternoon”). Figures are also required with larger or very exact amounts of money (“$6.82 million,” “£3,475”), decimals and fractions (“6.9387,” “¾?”), percentages (“36.9%,” “42 percent”), sports or competitive scores (“Bears win 21-10!” “The pupil scored 97 on the test”), and parts of plays and books (“chapter 14,” “Act 3,” “scene 2”).