LEARN MORE ABOUT GERUNDS

Gerunds

Happy Monday, good people of the blogosphere! Today, we're back to our regularly scheduled program: All things writerly and good books! One of the things I hated in school was diagramming sentences. It made English class boring. I just wanted to read books and write stories, ya know? But, alas, knowing the difference in a preposition, verb, adjective, and noun matters. Do you know what a gerund is? If you paid attention in English, you do. If you didn't, read on!

First, a definition:
ger·und  /ˈjerənd/ Noun - A form that is derived from a verb but that functions as a noun, in English ending in -ing.

Now, some examples:
Asking a question is easy.
Baking is her favorite past-time.
We went swimming in the ocean.
No matter which way we looked, the trees prevented us from seeing the car.

Grammar girl goes into a deeper definition, even giving examples of nouny gerunds, verby gerunds, and, the thing many gerunds are confused with, present participles.

But, for now, just know that gerunds end in -ing.