English grammar rules with examples

It seems like English grammar has about a million rules to learn. Between subject-verb agreement, Oxford commas, and active vs. passive voice, it’s easy to get lost in the grammar shuffle.

English grammar rules for beginners

But there aren’t actually a million grammar rules — in fact, if you master just these few, you can avoid common grammar mistakes.

Every sentence needs two parts to be complete.

• a subject (Katie plays the violin.)
• a verb (Katie plays the violin.)

Depending on the verb, a complete sentence — also known as an independent clause — might also have a direct object (Katie plays the violin).

If your sentence is missing a subject or a verb, it’s a sentence fragment.

You may not expect to find disagreement in a sentence about kittens, but the sentence “My kittens wants food” is definitely having an argument with itself.

The subject (kittens) is plural, but the verb (wants) is singular.

For subject-verb agreement, match singular subjects to singular verbs and plural subjects to plural verbs.

• My kit
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