Nouns: Identifying Nouns
Nouns are words that represent people, places or things (including ideas and feelings).
Examples:
- Person: teacher, Jose, mom, brother, doctor
- Place: school, California, home, Los Angeles, salon
- Thing: shoe, pencil, stapler, desk, lamp, pizza,
- Idea: freedom, compassion, length, justice, equality, honor
- Feeling: happiness, relief, sadness, anger
One good trick for identifying nouns is: If you can preface a word with an article (an, a, the), it's a noun: the comic, a hat, an apple.
Names don't work well with articles (it would sound strange to say The Margaret), but most words that require capitalization are proper nouns, and thus nouns.
Read the following sentence:
Sunny and Godzilla walked to Antonio's to order a large pepperoni pizza.
Sunny is a person. Antonio's is a place. Pizza is a thing. Godzilla likes to think he's a person, and is as big as a place, but qualifies as another thing.
It's also important to know that some words can be more than one part of speech.
Example:
The word "hit" can be a verb:
The boy hit the ball.
But "hit" can also be a noun"
The baseball player got a hit and then he scored.
So, even if you think a word is a verb, try preceding it with an article. If it words (and you could make a sentence), it's probably a noun too!
Because nouns represent just about everything, there are many types of nouns:
| Types of Nouns | Description | Examples |
| Common Nouns | Name people, places, things, ideas, or feelings, but not specific ones. | teacher, city, dog |
| Proper Nouns | Special types of nouns that represent particular people, places or things. | Miss Beck (teacher), Los Angeles (city), Max (dog) |
| Concrete Nouns | Nouns that you can experience with your five senses (see, hear, feel, taste, or smell) | pencil, ice cream, computer |
| Abstract Nouns | Nouns that your five senses CANNOT detect. | happiness, love, bravery |
| Count Nouns | Nouns that you can add a number to the front, or add an "s" to the end of the word(s) | 1 car, 2 cars, 3 cars... |
| NonCount Nouns | Nouns that only have a singular form (you cannot add a number to the front or and "s" to the end of these words) | weather, furniture, homework |
| Collective Nouns | Nouns that name groups (things) composed of members (usually people) | audience, class, jury |
| Compound Nouns | Nouns that consist of more than one word, but count as only one noun. | The Museum of Natural History, Overland School |