Pronouns, Prepositions, and Conjunctions

Welcome to Book 3: Pronouns, Prepositions, and Conjunctions, a book that teaches what we should know about the three categories of closed-class words.

There are eight traditional parts of speech. Five of the categories are open class: noun, verb, adjective, adverb, and interjection. In open-class categories, new words are frequently created. These words are often quite flexible; for example, many open-class words can appear in multiple parts-of-speech categories simply by taking on suffixes.

The three closed-class categories are pronoun, preposition, and conjunction—also known as the function words. The number of words in these categories is much smaller than the number of words in the open-class categories. Closed-class words—like pronouns—are designed to show relationships between words or sentence parts.

The goal of this book is to provide a close study of the words contained within the three closed-class categories, with a focus on those aspects that translate into writing improvement.