> > As opposed to: _Watching_ people can be very interesting.
>
> As opposed to: "Transitive gerund", which must be something else. :-)

"Watching," in the sentence above, is a transitive gerund, because it has the object "people"; "swimming" in "swimming is fun" is an intransitive gerund, because it has no object. Both types of gerunds are asked for in the RinkWorks feature "Crazy Libs." :-)

> The long answer is that I can't properly fathom refined points of usage for anything like "superlative", "transitive verbs", "abstract nouns" and "pluperfect subjunctive predicate".

Verb transitivity is about whether the verb has an object or not. "Abstract noun" is a noun that doesn't have a physical presence: "sadness," "corruption," "euphoria," "discomfort," etc. "Superlative," by itself, are things like "happier" and "ruddier" -- or would it be "happiest" and "ruddiest"? Or both?

"Pluperfect" is synonymous with "past perfect." It's a verb tense that is formed in English with the word "had" and denotes an action that was completed at a past time. For example, "She _had read_ Hamlet the week before but was so sleepy at the time, she barely remembered any of it." The "perfect" verb tense indicates an ongoing action that reaches completion AT, rather than before, the time you are speaking. I'm stuck for an example on that one. While I don't know, I suspect "future perfect" is something like "I will have read Hamlet by then."

The subjunctive tense is when you say something like, "If I were you, I'd jump for joy." The "were" in that sentence is in the subjunctive tense. You're theorizing about something that you hope would happen, or might have happened, but *didn't*.

"Predicate" is the main verb in a sentence and all its objects and modifiers -- basically everything except the subject and *its* modifiers.

So there is a small lesson on grammar, and before you sit back in awe of my amazingly vast array of knowledge, note that I had to look up all the various "perfect" tenses and verify that my guess about "subjunctive" was correct. And I probably still bungled *something* up.

At any rate, I don't honestly think you have to know what "subjunctive" means to use it correctly. It's important to know what nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, conjunctions, and prepositions are, because those are the basic building blocks of English. (Sometimes the judgment between adjectives and adverbs is not obvious, and if you don't know what those are, or if what you're modifying is a phrase or clause rather than a single word, you can get stuck for an answer.) But you don't really need to know what "subjunctive" means in order to recognize that "if I were" is correct and "if I was" is not. Nor do you need to know that "jumping" is an intransitive gerund (unless you're "jumping the gun," in which case it is transitive), because verb transitivity is something we tend to learn instinctively when we learn what verbs like "jump" actually mean.

I think EVERY point of grammar you learn is helpful. If you learn what a "noun" is, gosh does that ever help you formulate correct sentences! If you learn what a "conjunctive adverb" is, well, it might help you once in your life, but 99.99% of the time you use the word "if," you won't need to know its part of speech to use it correctly. In short, there's a point of diminishing returns where learning grammatical terms becomes a hobby rather than a necessity. Speaking for myself, while I don't know even close to everything about grammar, what I do know is a great benefit to me -- even the weird, obscure stuff -- because I *like* language, find an intrinsic joy in its study, and do believe that the more I know about it, the better I personally am able to write. But beyond a certain point, one's ability to write becomes increasingly more affected by one's clarity of thought, talent for expression, and vocabulary, and decreasingly affected by one's knowledge of grammar.

And, Wolf, frankly, you're one of the most literate, concise, and eloquent writers among us (whether or not it's easy for you to write clearly, you may it LOOK easy, and that's as far as many professional writers get). I look up to your talent for expression. I don't think learning what "subjunctive" means is your most pressing priority for improving it. But you might find it an intrinsically fulfilling study, as I do.