A noun has been defined as a word used as the name of something.
It may be the name of a person, a place, a thing, or of some abstract quality, such as, love or truth.
Common and Proper Nouns.
A Proper Noun is a noun that names some particular or special place, person, people, or thing.
A proper noun should always begin with a capital letter; as, English, London, British, John.
Capital Letters & Proper Nouns
As a rule we use a Capital Letter for the first letter of a name or proper noun. This includes names of people, places, companies, days of the week and months.
For example:
- This is George.
- I live in Italy.
- They work for Amazon.
- My birthday is in January.
- I don’t like Mondays.
- I bought it at Harrods.
A Common Noun is a general or class name. Unlike proper nouns, a common noun is not capitalized unless it either begins a sentence or appears in a title.
For example, the word dog is a common noun; but if your dog was called Rex, the word Rex is a proper noun:
A common noun must fall into one or more of these categories:
- Abstract nouns: Things you can’t see or touch (e.g., Happiness, joy, love).
- Collective nouns: Describe groups (e.g., team, orchestra, family).
- Compound nouns: Nouns made up of more than one word (e.g., Shoe shop, sunset, father-in-law).
- Concrete nouns: Things you can see or touch (e.g., tree, ball, pencil).
- Non-countable nouns: Objects or ideas you can’t count, that lack a plural form (e.g., music, oxygen, wine).
- Person specific nouns: People, jobs, occupations (e.g., mother, father, waitress).
More examples of the difference between common and proper nouns:
-
My favourite newspaper (common noun) is the Washington Post (proper noun).
-
Her husband (common noun) is called John (proper noun).
-
Babe Ruth (proper noun) is the greatest baseball player (common noun) in history.
Adapted from: Practical Grammar and Composition, by Thomas Wood
Common and Proper Nouns
A noun has been defined as a word used as the name of something.
Nouns
Is it a common noun or a proper noun?
1.
London 2.
Book 3.
Teacher 4.
Jack 5.
Tree 6.
Friend 7.
Amazon 8.
Pencil 9.
The United States of America 10.
Sunday
Comments