Hey, remember when I wrote about the YUNiversity and their crazy ideas on what a subject is? Remember how they said the subject of sentence is ALWAYS a noun? Well, they’re not the only ones in crazy grammar town. Grammarly also likes to play fast and loose with grammatical subjects. Check it:
First off, not every sentence needs a subject. Most do, but not all. For example, imperative sentences do not have subjects because the subject is often implied:
Just do it.
Don’t worry, be happy.
Get to the choppaaaaaaaa!
What’s a little crazy is that Grammarly uses an imperative sentence as an example to show that nouns can act as objects. Do they think that Give is the subject of their example sentence? (Narrator’s voice: It’s not. The sentence doesn’t have a subject.)
Second, like I said in the YUNiversity post, the subject of a sentence in English is not always a noun. It often is, but not always. The following can act as the subject in English:
Dummy it – It’s hot.
Unstressed/existential there – There’s plenty of time.
Prepositional phrase – Up in the front will suit me fine.
Adverb phrase – Gently does it.
Adjective phrase – The comic told some funny jokes.
All types of clauses – That he failed his driving test surprised everybody.; What Grammarly wrote online shocked me.
And more!
The rest of the info on the Grammarly blog post is pretty good, so that’s nice. I don’t know if Grammarly is copying stuff off of YUNiversity or if it’s the other way around. But somebody is cheating off somebody.
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