Proper nouns are words and phrases used as names for particular individuals, places, and events. Most proper nouns are singular, and most begin with a capital letter. This exercise will give you practice in identifying proper nouns.
Instructions:
The 10 passages in this exercise come from (and are linked to) our Scrapbook of Styles. Each passage contains at least one proper noun. See if you can identify all the proper nouns, and then compare your answers with those on page two.
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Also see:
Exercise in Identifying Nouns: Practice in Recognizing the Parts of Speech
Instructions:
The 10 passages in this exercise come from (and are linked to) our Scrapbook of Styles. Each passage contains at least one proper noun. See if you can identify all the proper nouns, and then compare your answers with those on page two.
TIP: To view this exercise without ads, click on the printer icon near the top of the page.
- I began to like New York, the racy, adventurous feel of it at night and the satisfaction that the constant flicker of men and women and machines gives to the restless eye.
(F. Scott Fitzgerald, Fitzgerald's New York in the 1920s) - On Saturday mornings, the older guys played big games against visitors from other neighborhoods or went off themselves to play beyond our frontiers.
(Pete Hamill, Pete Hamill on Stickball in New York) - One December morning near the end of the year when snow was falling moist and heavy for miles all around, so that the earth and the sky were indivisible, Mrs. Bridge emerged from her home and spread her umbrella.
(Evan S. Connell, Evan S. Connell's Narrative Sketch of Mrs. Bridge) - Miss Bentley was an amazing exhibition of musical energy--a large, dark, masculine lady, whose feet pounded the floor while her fingers pounded the keyboard--a perfect piece of African sculpture, animated by her own rhythm.
(Langston Hughes, Langston Hughes on Harlem in the 1920s)
- That is the message, the content of Los Angeles: don’t walk. Stay inside. Don’t walk. Drive. Don’t walk. Run! I tried the cabs. No use. The cabbies are all Saturnians who aren’t even sure whether this is a right planet or a left planet. The first thing you have to do, every trip, is teach them how to drive.
(Martin Amis, Hyperbole in Martin Amis's Money) - The street was empty of passersby at that hour on a Sunday, and only the arrival of a cruising taxicab, which slowed immediately, saved Miss Morelli from severe injury and possibly death. As it was, the driver had to take her to St. Luke Hospital, where she stayed for three days, recovering from shock and concussion.
(Constance Taber Colby, Colby's Narrative of New York in the 1970s) - Virginia Woolf's father went in for mountaineering and public groaning, mine for gardening and a kind of tuneless humming; he also liked to walk with his dog Anna by the river Deben in Suffolk.
(Margaret Drabble, Examples in Margaret Drabble's "The Missing Piece") - The panto has its historical roots in the harlequinade and was cross-fertilized by the Victorian music hall. In essence, it consists of a fairy tale--the story of Cinderella, Mother Goose, Alladin, Dick Whittington--that, while drawing on a traditional narrative line, is constantly updated by topical references, often of a satirical nature.
(Julian Barnes, A Definition of Pantomime) - That man over there, he's a Luxembourger. And so is that girl. They don't know anything about the New York Yankees, they don't know the theme tune to the Mickey Mouse Club, they are from another world.
(Bill Bryson, Lists and Anaphora in Bill Bryson's Neither Here Nor There) - Also on the walls were the Gettysburg Address, Declaration of Independence, Pledge of Allegiance, a picture of a winged Jesus ushering along two kids who belonged in a Little Rascals film, and the obligatory waterfall lithograph. The clincher: small, white, hexagonal floor tiles. Two old men, carrying their arms folded behind, stopped to greet each other with a light, feminine touching of fingertips, a gesture showing the duration of their friendship.
(William Least Heat-Moon, Lists in William Least Heat-Moon's Place Description)
Also see:
Exercise in Identifying Nouns: Practice in Recognizing the Parts of Speech