Hello Grammar lovers! On today’s #GrammarSeries we are talking about Gerunds.
Although the term might sound foreign, the gerund is a common part of speech that most of us use every day, whether we know it or not.
Today’s post will help you identify what you have been using before or what you have been struggling to recognize.
All gerunds end in ‘ing’, but this doesn’t make them so easy to identify. Why? All present participles also end in ‘ing’.
So what’s the difference?
Gerunds function as nouns. They can be subjects, objects, subject complements etc.
Present participles, on the other hand, complete progressive verbs or act as modifiers.
Here are two examples to help you understand them better.
- My father’s first love is singing.
Singing is acting as the subject complement of the verb ‘is’.
- Acting comes naturally to me.
Acting is the subject in this sentence.
Gerunds can be made negative by adding “not.”
Look at this example
- The best thing for your health is not smoking.
Now that you know, we hope you can teach someone else or just share this post with them.
