12/27/2020 The Writing Center | Choosing the Correct Word Form | Guides

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THE WRITING CENTER

Guides 

23 Ways to Improve Your Draft

Active and Passive Voice

Advice on Setting Up and Working with a Writing Group

Advice for Writing Personal Statements

All About Counterarguments

All About Resume Writing

APA Style Quick-Guide

Avoiding Fragments with Dependent Clauses

Brainstorming Techniques

Chicago Citation Style Quick-Guide

Choosing Between In nitive and Gerund: “To do” or “doing”?

Choosing the Correct Word Form

Cohesion and Coherence

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Combining Clauses to Avoid Comma Splices, Run-ons, and Fragments

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Commas, Semicolons, and Colons

Common Writing Terms and Concepts De ned

Count vs. Noncount Nouns

Critical Reading

De nite and Inde nite Articles

Editing Checklist

A Guide to Annotated Bibliographies

Guidelines for Posting to Discussion Boards

Hedges: Softening Claims in Academic Writing

How to Edit Your Own Essay: Strategies for ESL Students

How to Write a Research Question

Improving Cohesion: The "Known/New Contract"

Introduction Sections in Scienti c Research Reports (IMRaD)

Conclusion Sections in Scienti c Research Reports (IMRaD)

Introductions and Conclusions for Humanities Papers

MLA 7 v. MLA 8: What’s di erent?

MLA Citation Style Quick-Guide

Modal Verbs

News Writing Fundamentals

Online Resources for Improving Grammar and Word Choice in Writing

Organizational Maps

Outlining

Overview

Parallel Structure

Plagiarism

Prepositions

Problem Proposals

Pronouns

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Proper Nouns
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Providing Feedback to Writers

Quotation, Paraphrase, Summary, and Analysis

Reducing Informality in Academic Writing

Reverse Outlining

Revising

Rhetoric

Run-on Sentences

Same Form, but Di erent Functions: Various Meanings of Verb+ing and Verb+ed

Searching for Sources on the Mason Library Databases

Sending Email to Faculty and Administrators

Signal Phrases

Strategies for Reading Academic Articles

Subject-Verb Agreement

Taking In-Class Essay Exams

Thesis Statements

The Three Common Tenses Used in Academic Writing

Tips for Active Reading

Tips for Note Taking

Transitions

Turabian Style Quick-Guide

Understanding Your Instructor’s Prompt

Using Reduced Relative Clauses to Write Concisely

Verb Tenses

When to Summarize, Paraphrase, and Quote

Word Bank of Business Terms

Word Order in Statements with Embedded Questions

Writer's Block

Writing an Abstract

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Writing Business Letters


Writing Business Memos

Writing Concisely

Writing Cover Letters

Writing E ective Talking Points

Writing a Scienti c Research Report (IMRaD)

Writing a Literature Review

Writing Personal Statements for Health Professions

Writing a PowerPoint Presentation

Writing Your First Sentence

IMRaD Method Section

IMRaD Results Discussion

Online Resources for Improving Word Choice and Grammar

Personal Statements for Graduate School Applications

An Introduction to Strategies for Structuring and Writing Reviews of the Literature

APA Style Quick-Guide

Algunos recursos en línea para la gramática y el vocabulario en español

Los tiempos y los modos verbales

Los artículos

Organizing Literature Reviews

Abstracts in Scienti c Research Papers (IMRaD)

Revising Prose for Concision: 10 Tips

Signposting Language for Improving Cohesion

Choosing the Correct Word Form

 

*The results uncovered some importance di erences among the groups.

The sentence above contains a grammatical problem in regards to word form. In particular, the
writer uses the noun importance when the adjective important should have been used. We can still

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understand what this sentence means, but because an incorrect su x is used, the sentence is
ungrammatical. This handout will go through some common su xes and strategies to help you

improve your knowledge of word forms.

Background

In English, there are many words that have the same root, but can be changed to be a verb, noun,
adjective, or adverb by adding a su x. For instance, the root beaut can be used to form a noun
beauty, a verb beautify, an adjective beautiful, and an adverb beautifully. To use a word correctly in
a sentence, it is important to know two things: not only which part of speech to choose (e.g. noun
or verb), but also which su x creates this part of speech (e.g. -ness or -tion to form a speci c
noun). This two-stage process can be quite challenging. The table below shows the most common
su xes that are used to create four di erent parts of speech:

Noun Verb Adjective Adverb

Function: Function: Function: Function:

Names a person, Expresses an Describes or Modi es a verb,

place, or thing. action, doing modi es a noun. adjective, or
something. other adverb.

Common Common Common Common

Su xes: Su xes: Su xes: Su xes:

-tion: education, -ize: realize, -al: general, social -ly is the only
information emphasize common su x
-ent: independent,
for adverbs:
-ity: community, -en: atten, con dent
activity broaden probably
-ant: important,
-ty: society, -ate: di erentiate, dominant certainly
beauty initiate
-ive: positive, exactly
-er: teacher, -fy: satisfy, liquefy active
importantly
reader
-ify: exemplify, -ous: courteous
nally
beautify
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-or: behavior, -ious: various, simply

professor obvious

clearly
-ar: seminar, -ate: accurate,
 
singular private

Note:
-r: computer -ful: useful,
beautiful
Some adverbs
-ance:
do not end in -
importance -less: endless,
ly (e.g. well,
helpless
-ness: business soon, always,
here, and hard),
-ism: criticism
while some
adjectives can
-ment:
have the ending
development,
-ly (early, daily,
treatment
oily, lonely, and
-ent: student, friendly).
president

-ant: assistant

-ship:
relationship

-age: percentage

-ery: discovery

Table adapted from Folse, K. S. (2009). Keys to teaching grammar to English language learners: A
practical handbook. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.

Strategies for Working on Word Form Issues

- To identify which part of speech should be used in a particular phrase, you could ask yourself
whether you need a word that would name an object (noun), express an action (verb), describe an
object (adjective), or modify an action or description (adverb).

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- Use the table above to identify which part of speech is created with the su x you used.

- Check words you are unsure about in dictionaries (e.g.
http://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/us/). Before providing a word de nition, dictionaries
usually note to which part of speech a given word belongs.

- COCA Word and Phrase (https://www.wordandphrase.info/) can be checked to see how a

particular word is used in sentences to make sure you have selected the right form.

- Sometimes you know which part of speech to use, but you are not sure which su x to use (e.g. is
it di cultness or di culty?). Since word su xes are unpredictable, words can be checked in
dictionaries, corpora, or just Googled.

- It is also a good idea to jot down words with the common endings in a notebook while you read
for school, work, or pleasure. Then you can return to your notes and look up which part of speech
these words are.

Practice

Underline correct word forms:

Over the semester, I worked on (purposefully / purpose) crafting questions to elicit, probe, and
(connective / connect) students' ideas during a (discuss / discussion). These ideas were
presented in our third (classify / class) meeting and reinforced in our readings from Chapin's
Classroom Discussions (2003). We talked (explicitly / explicit) about asking questions to elicit
students' (initial / initially) thoughts and solutions; asking questions to probe students' answers
when the (teacher / teach) does not understand what the (studious / student) is saying, when
he or she wants to (verify / veri cation) that right answers are supported by (correct /
correctly) understanding, and when he or she wants to understand the thinking behind an
incorrect answer; and supporting students to make (connects / connections) between solutions,
methods, models, or mathematical concepts.

The (discussions / discusses) that transpired in my math lesson (re ect / re ective) my ability
to skillfully ask (purposeful / purpose) questions when leading a whole-class discussion. In
Discussion A, I began by asking students to tell me something they noticed about the Penrose
tiling (00:40). By asking a (broadly / broad) question all students could answer, I was able to elicit
(initial / initiative) thoughts from many of my students and attend to the learning of all students.
Seven students were (ability / able) to contribute their ideas about this (designer / design) and
many others had their hands raised. I also used thumbs up or thumbs down and nod your head
if… questions to elicit answers from the entire class at once (07:48). This allowed me to get a
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(sense / sensible) of each student’s thinking, even if he or she was uncomfortable participating in
the whole-group discussion.

PRACTICE EXERCISE ADAPTED FROM MICHIGAN CORPUS OF UPPER-LEVEL STUDENT PAPERS.
(2009). ANN ARBOR, MI: THE REGENTS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN.
LAST UPDATED 10/17/2017

Grammar & Style

Avoiding Fragments with Dependent Clauses

Active and Passive Voice

Choosing Between In nitive and Gerund: “To do” or “doing”?

Choosing the Correct Word Form

Combining Clauses to Avoid Comma Splices, Run-ons, and Fragments

Commas, Semicolons, and Colons

Count vs. Noncount Nouns

De nite and Inde nite Articles

Improving Cohesion: The "Known/New Contract"

Modal Verbs

Parallel Structure

Prepositions

Pronouns

Proper Nouns

Reducing Informality in Academic Writing

Run-on Sentences

Same Form, but Di erent Functions: Various Meanings of Verb+ing and Verb+ed

Subject-Verb Agreement

The Three Common Tenses Used in Academic Writing

Using Reduced Relative Clauses to Write Concisely

Verb Tenses

Word Order in Statements with Embedded Questions

Download this guide as a PDF

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