Active

Active is the active form of a verb whose subject is the performer of the action verb, such as kicked in the boy kicked the ball. See also Passive

Acronym

Acronym is a kind of abbreviation. It’s formed by taking the first letters of several words, and pronounced like a word.

UNESCO from United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization

Article

Article is usually omitted in acronyms

The UNESCO

Accent

Accent is a particular way of speaking that can show the place the speakers come from, or their social class.

She speaks English with a strong German accent.

Adjective

Adjective is any of a class of words that modifies a noun or other substantive, as by describing qualities of the entity denoted, stating its limits or quantity, or distinguishing it from the others.

The word beautiful in she is a beautiful woman.

Position

Most adjectives go in two main places in a sentence, attributive position (before a noun) and predicative position (after a copular verb, as be, seem, appear, look, sound, smell, taste, feel, become, get)

E.g.: the word new in the following sentences:

- attributive position: The new student doesn’t know my name yet

- predicative position: She is a new student

Attributive adjective is possible to come after a noun it modifies in a few cases, as follows:

- in older English, as grand in He came from his palace grand

- in some fixed phrases, as the bold typed words in Secretary General, Poet Laureate, God Almighty, court martial, President elect, Attorney General

- in a relative clause, as available in he will buy all the tickets available (which are available)

- in an expression of measurement, as high in five meters high

When some adjectives come before a noun, they have to be put in a particular order.

a beautiful old brick house (not an old beautiful brick house)

It’s very rare to find a long list of adjectives, but it’s important that whatsoever adjectives are used be placed in the proper order.

Table 1 order of adjectives before the noun

1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10	11
Determiner	Quality Character	Size	Age	Participle	Shape	Color	Origin	Material	Noun	Modified Noun
The	Beautiful	Big	Old	Neglected	Square	White	Spanish	Stone	brick	House

The beautiful big Spanish house

Adjective without nouns

a. The + Adjective

The old, the poor, the young, etc are adjectives used in the way without nouns they modify. In this way, adjectives are always plural. The old means the old people, the poor the poor people, the young the young people—not the old person or an old or the olds.

These expressions cannot be used without the, and with a possessive -‘s.

We can’t say the government is really concerned about poor, but the poor; the poor’s problems, but the poor people’s problem.

These expressions sometimes are used without the after quantifiers like more and many.

Many old stay at that retirement home.

b. The + Origin

Adjectives of nationality ending in –sh or –ch as Spanish, British, French, Dutch are used without nouns after the.

The Dutch occupied Indonesia for more than three hundreds years.

In this case, the Dutch means the Dutch people.

We can’t say a Dutch, but a Dutchman.

Abbreviation

Abbreviation is taken from Latin brevis, meaning "short". It is a shortened form of a word or phrase.

• Mr. for Mister
• BBC for British Broadcasting Corporation
• NATO for North Atlantic Treaty Organization

Pronunciation

Mr. is not usually written in full, and is pronounced like the full one.

• BBC is pronounced letter by letter

• and NATO like a word

the latter is called acronym. See also Acronym

Article

The article depends on the pronunciation of the first letter of the abbreviation

• An IRA attack
• A US diplomat

• A BA degree
• An MP

• The USA

• The RSPCA

Apostrophe in plural form

An apostrophe (’) may be used in the plural form

• CD’s or CDs
  When an abbreviation contains more than one full point, put the s after the final one.
• Ph.D.s
• M.Phil.s
• the d.t.s