Describe this picture using as many nouns as possible.

"The thing is that nouns are things that stand for things in your writing ..."

Meaningless, right? You need better nouns than "thing" to understand the definition of a noun. Nouns carry the bulk of the meaning in any sentence. The best nouns allow writers to convey vivid pictures and precise ideas to their readers.

You've heard many times that a noun is a person, place, or thing. You might have also learned that a noun is an idea. You also know that names, proper nouns, begin with capital letters. So?

How do nouns improve the quality of your writing? They help you be more specific. You want to use nouns wisely and place them where they will have maximum impact. There are no absolute rules for writing, but there are a few rules of thumb.

After you find Waldo, see if you can name all the nouns in this picture.

Let's add a few details to the traditional definition of a noun. A noun generally represents something that can be possessed. Test it for yourself. If a word can logically follow "my" — as in "my dog," "my independence," and "my New Year's Eve" — you've got yourself a noun. The test phrase "my ______" works fairly well to distinguish nouns, but you must still test the words in their contexts.

Another way to determine if a word is a noun is to look for the noun marker. The words "a," "an," and "the" precede nouns.

Show Me the Nouns

Here's an excerpt from Edgar Lee Masters' collection of poems Spoon River Anthology. In this piece, Masters paints a picture of a country afternoon. Which words are nouns? Use the test phrase "my ______" or look for the noun markers "a," "an," and "the."

INSTRUCTIONS: Click-and-drag over the invisible words below to reveal the poet's words. The invisible words are all nouns. Think of what nouns you would use, then reveal the poet's choices. The pine woods on the hill, And the farmhouse, miles away, Showed clear as though behind a lens, Under a sky of peacock blue! But a blanket of cloud by afternoon Muffled the earth. And you walked the road, And the clover field, where the only sound, Was the cricket's liquid tremolo.

Willard Fluke, one of the 244 souls memorialized in Edgar Lee Masters's Spoon River Anthology had a crush on a Cleopatra look-alike.

Why do you think "peacock" or "liquid" are not nouns in the poem, yet they can fit in the test phrase "my peacock"? Could you tell that "tremolo" was a noun even if you weren't sure of its meaning? Did you get a sense that "tremolo" was a kind of sound? Context is the most important clue to understanding parts of speech.

No Weaklings Wanted

Avoid weak nouns such as "stuff" and "thing" that convey little or no specific meaning. Weak nouns are often a sign that a sentence can be improved. For example, "He had stuff to do" begs the question, "What stuff?"

Use specific nouns. It is often preferable to use a specific noun in place of a more general one. In the poem "Chicago," Carl Sandburg dubbed the city "Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat." Those phrases are more specific and more evocative than "Factory Worker, Farmer."

They say that New York City is the "Big Apple," so what's Chicago? "Hog butcher for the world," according to Carl Sandburg's poem, "Chicago."

Tell Me More

Use your noun power to get more specific. Look:

• "The gentleman got into his car and drove away." What do you see?
• "The surfer dude got into his car and drove away." How about now?
• "The coach got into his car and drove away." And now?

Location, Location, Location

• A high school hunk bets his friends that he can bench-press 200 pounds.

• Being able to bench-press 200 pounds is the subject of the bet among a high school hunk and his friends.

		Story Poem: Create a Story List Poem

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