O, Oh. Distinguish carefully between “?” and “oh.” The first is used mainly when directly addressing a revered or worshipped figure: “? Great One, grant your blessings and favors on us, your humble villagers.” It acts as an adjective in that it stands directly before the word or words it modifies or evokes, but it is normally capitalized wherever it appears in a sentence to indicate reverence or solemnity, and it is not followed by any punctuation: “Hear us, O judge.”
The interjection “oh” can appear anywhere in a sentence to indicate surprise or exclamation: “Oh, it’s raining!” “It’s raining, but, oh, I wanted to eat outside!” Since “oh” is an interjected part of a sentence, it is usually set off by commas, as in the examples. It is not normally capitalized unless it appears as the first word of a sentence or stands alone: “Oh! A mouse!”
Object. In sentences with transitive verbs in the active voice, the subject of the sentence performs some action on a thing or person. That thing or person is said to be the “object” of the verb and to be in the objective case (also called accusative case).
There is no special form for the objective case for nouns, but pronouns change form (see declension): “The soldier shot the prisoner; the bullet hit him.” In the example both “prisoner” and “him” are objects of the active, transitive verbs “shot” and “hit.” While “prisoner” is in the objective case, it is indistinguishable from the normal, ordinary, or nominative case of the word. “Him,” however, is an inflected, or changed, form of “he” used for the objective case of this pronoun. See inflection and case.
Objects in sentences can be of any gender, number, or construction—that is, they can be compound words, phrases, clauses, or any combinations of them: “The artist painted vast swirls of color, leaping and falling, twisting vortices of emblems and their effigies.” Everything in the example after the word “painted” is its object.
Although there is no limit on the complexity or content of any sentence’s object, remember to make sure that all the pronouns in it are of the correct gender, number, and case to refer clearly and accurately to the subject or object they modify or relate to. See antecedent and modifier.
Prepositions also govern objects in the objective case: “The cow looked at her, and she glanced toward the farmer.” The prepositions “at” and “toward” are followed by the objects “her” and “the farmer.” Again, noun objects are not distinguishable by form but only by function, while most pronoun objects appear in a different form.
Remember also that linking verbs like “is” are not followed by objects but by predicate nominatives (also called subject complements) that are not in the objective case but in the nominative: “Who is he?” See also predicate.
Objective case. Words that function as objects (direct object or indirect object or objects of prepositions) in sentences are in the objective (also called accusative) case. This case is not distinguishable from the nominative or normal form of nouns but is marked (or inflected) in pronouns: “I, me” “we, us” “he, him” “she, her” and “they, them” (the nominative and objective cases, respectively, of the personal pronouns). See inflection.
Of. Preposition governing the objective case: “That is not characteristic of him.” Do not add this preposition to other prepositions that don’t need it and can stand on their own (outside, inside, off). Do not use “of” to stand for “have” in compound verbs like “could have.”
Off. Preposition governing the objective case: “We helped take the heavy costume off her.”
On, upon. Preposition governing the objective case: “The blame fell on us.” Use “on” except in the few cases when fairy-tale language is the proper style: “Once upon a time.” Otherwise, “upon” is an old-fashioned word that has lost its usefulness.
Once. See adverb and conjunctive adverb.
One. “One” is not only a cardinal number but an indefinite pronoun always used in the singular: “Shadow was one of my dogs, the one that remains my favorite.” See also number and pronoun.
One another. See reciprocal pronoun.
Oneself. Set reflexive pronoun and-self.
Onto. Preposition governing the objective case: “The burden of work shifted onto us.”
Op. cit. This abbreviation of the Latin words “opere citato” (“in the work cited”) is used only in footnotes and endnotes to scholarly works, and even there it is losing favor and being replaced by shortened titles or authors’ names.
Or. See correlative conjunction.
Order of words. The simplest, “normal” order of words in a sentence is subject, verb, and object (or subject complement): “Flemming hit the target; Hemming is an archer.” The example is a compound sentence made up of two independent clauses each of which displays the simple, normal word order on which all variants are made. And the variant word orders are endless, as shown in entries emphasis, question, imperative, inversion, and so on.
Subjects can come after verbs or stand in their “normal” place: “Hit the ball, Reid! The ball, Reid, is the thing to hit.” Similarly, verbs and objects can move around in the basic sentence structure or in any of the many altered structures that are possible for sentences: “The ball, hit by Reid, soared toward a fence being painted by Johnson and being watched through a telescope by Potter.”
One way to make your writing more lively or informative is to vary the order and structure of words in sentences within paragraphs and from paragraph to paragraph. Not only can you play with the order of the basic pattern of words but you can vary the length of sentences, shifting between long, complex ones and simple, short ones. Long sentences need not be complex; they can be made up of simple lists of subjects and objects: “Books, pamphlets, bulletins, newsletters, and software are created, compiled, edited, produced, and published by organizations, associations, government offices, military establishments, businesses, and publishing houses.” The example simply combines compound subjects, verbs, and objects in the “normal” subject, verb, object pattern. In similar fashion, short sentences can be made complex by inversion or other devices: “To whom is it given?”
Voice, mood, and tense can also vary to modify word order and invigorate writing. While it is a generally correct practice to avoid many passive constructions, the occasional passive voice sentence can create emphasis or shift tone in interesting ways. Imperatives can also provide variety and point, as can careful shifting of the time in which an action or condition is cast.
Sentences need not all begin with subjects. Prepositional phrases, dependent clauses, verbal phrases, interjections, and other elements are sometimes welcome changes from subject, verb, object consistency: “Speaking of word order, try moving things around, and you will see an immediate change in your statements. Maybe even an improvement!”
Nor do sentences have to end with objects. Again, all sorts of phrases and clauses can appear at the end (or in the middle) of any sentence and help it make its point: “Jumbled together at the end of sentences, words influence sense in a manner that is hard to judge, difficult to evaluate, and sometimes painful to experience.”
In rearranging words from the simple sentence pattern into other forms, keep in mind the need to maintain agreement among all the sentence elements.
Ordinal number. Numbers that express sequence or order are called “ordinals”: “The Porsche was first, and the Mazda was twenty-third.” Simple numbers are called “cardinal numbers.” See also number.
Otherwise. See conjunctive adverb.
Our. See are.
Ourselves. See reflexive pronoun.
Out. Preposition governing the objective case.
Outside of. In formal writing there is no reason to add “of” to prepositions like “outside” or “inside.”
Over. Preposition governing the objective case: “The curse hung over us as we explored the tomb.”