| As | ||
| Credit to: Quora | ||
| Part of Speech: Adverb, Conjunction, Preposition | ||
| Check the Punctuation page for information on comma usage for “as”. | ||
| Adverb | ||
| Used in comparisons to indicate the degree of something. | The child sang as sweetly as a nightingale. | |
| Indicate examples | …large carnivores, as the bear or lion. | |
| Subordinating Conjunction | ||
| Indicates degree or extent | You’re as sweet as sugar. | |
| Similarity in manner | Do as I do. | |
| Confluence in time | It happened as I was running home. | |
| Cause | I went to bed early, as I was exhausted. | |
| Resulting action | She was foolish enough as to think… | |
| Accordance | The accommodations were nice as hotels go. | |
| Preposition | ||
| Indicates function or role | Acted as a guardian to… | |
| Similarity in manner | The group acted as one. | |
Grammar (a set of structural rules and the principles for any language that determines where words are placed in phrases or sentences as well as how the language is spoken) is an evolving list, and sometimes I run across an example that helps explain better.
Nor are the self-editing pages complete. There’s always a new term someone, somewhere, uses to describe a part of grammar. There’s always a better way to explain it, so it makes quicker and/or better sense, so I would appreciate suggestions and comments from anyone… With which areas of grammar do you struggle?
If you’d like to track it, bookmark this page. And consider sharing this Grammar Explanation with friends by tweeting it.
Kathy Davie is an editor, author, and artist with degrees in Technical Writing & Editing, Digital Media, and History from Metropolitan State College in Denver, Colorado.
A huge believer in knowledge being power, Kathy has an ongoing and free set of Author Tools for authors interested in self-editing with an ongoing series of posts on Word Confusions, what’s Properly Punctuated, those tricky Formatting Tips, and the sleep-inducing Grammar Explanations. There is also an online tutorial on Using Microsoft Word’s Markup Tool.
And if you get too sleepy, explore KD Did It for various writing and editing services.
