Sharp PW-E350 operation manual Nouns, Adjectives, Syllabification

•present participles dropping a final silent e and adding -ingto the stem, e.g., change → changing; dance → dancing

Other forms are given in the dictionary, notably for:

•verbs that inflect by doubling a consonant, e.g., bat → batted, batting

•verbs ending in -ythat inflect by changing -yto -i, e.g., try → tries, tried

•verbs in which past tense and past participle do not follow the regular -edpattern, e.g., feel → past and past participle felt; awake → past awoke; past participle awoken

•present participles that add -ingbut retain a final e (in order to make clear that the pronunciation of g remains soft), e.g., singe → singeing

Nouns

Plurals formed by adding -s(or -eswhen they end in -s, -x, -z, -sh, or soft -ch) are regarded as regular and are not shown, e.g., dog → dogs; lunch → lunches

Other plural forms are given in the dictionary, notably for:

•nouns ending in -ior -o, e.g., agouti → agoutis; albino → albinos

•nouns ending in -a,-um, or -usthat are or appear to be Latinate forms, e.g., alumna → alumnae; spectrum → spectra; alveolus → alveoli

•nouns ending in -y, e.g., fly → flies; party → parties

•nouns with more than one plural form, e.g., crux → cruxes or cruces; money

→ moneys or monies

•nouns with plurals showing a change in the stem, e.g., foot → feet; louse → lice

•nouns with plurals unchanged from the singular form, e.g., sheep → sheep; bonsai → bonsai

Adjectives

The following forms for comparative and superlative are regarded as regular and are not shown in the dictionary:

•words of one syllable adding -erand -est, e.g., great → greater, greatest

•words of one syllable ending in silent e, which drop the -eand add -erand -est, e.g., brave → braver, bravest

•words that form the comparative and superlative by adding “more” and “most”; e.g., beautiful → more beautiful, most beautiful

Other forms are given in the dictionary, notably for:

•adjectives that form the comparative and superlative by doubling a final consonant, e.g., hot → hotter, hottest

•two-syllable adjectives that form the comparative and superlative with -erand - est (typically adjectives ending in -yand their negative forms), e.g., happy → happier, happiest; unhappy → unhappier, unhappiest

Syllabification

In the New Oxford American Dictionary, syllable breaks are shown for main entries and derivatives. Although all possible breaks are shown, there are some conven- tions that govern how writers break words at the ends of lines. Guidelines include:

•Avoid a break that will leave one letter and a hyphen at the end of the line or one letter (or one letter and a punctuation mark such as a period) at the beginning of a line.

•Avoid breaking a word that is already hyphenated except at that hyphen (e.g., self-affirmation; leather-bound).

•Never break proper names.

•Avoid breaking abbreviations.

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