What are Interjections and How to Use Them?
Interjections are sounds, words or phrases that express the speaker’s emotion.
Here are some examples:
Ouch! It hurts!
Hmm… That’s an interesting question.
Hey! What are you doing?
Wow, that’s wonderful!
My goodness, what happened?
What is special about interjections is that they remain unaffected by the rest of the sentence. They do not change their form. They do not have singular/plural form, different tenses etc. Also, a single interjection can be considered as an Entire sentence!
Example:
Goodbye!
(That’s the whole sentence…)
Sometimes regular words in the language function as interjections.
Examples:
Yes!
Sorry!
Ok.
How to use interjections?
You can use them to express emotions such as surprise (e.g. oh!), annoyance (e.g. damn!), joy (e.g. Hurray!), etc. They are also used to greet (e.g. hi!), pause your speech (e.g. um…) and so forth.
Writing tip: When combining the interjection with the rest of the sentence you should usually use an exclamation mark (!) or a comma (,) depending on the strength of the statement.
Examples:
Wow, this is awesome!
Ah, that’s nice.
Interjection is a part of speech. Click here for more data on the English parts of speech.
I love your blog, it has some great resources. I will be checking back here frequently.
Comment by Ben — November 14, 2010 @ 10:17
Many teachers don’t know how to explain the subtleties of the English language like interjections and so don’t cover them properly. Insightful piece.
Comment by ESL teacher Mary — November 20, 2010 @ 06:56
Interjections if used properly can really boost the weight of the sentence and can be an useful tool in good communication.
Comment by vocabexperts — December 14, 2010 @ 02:09