Grammatical Case in English

Old English had five cases: nominative, accusative, genitive, dative, and instrumental.

Modern English has three cases:

1. Nominative (also called subjective)
2. Accusative (also called objective)
3. Genitive (also called possessive)

The objective case subsumes the old dative and instrumental cases.

Case refers to the relation that one word has to another in a sentence, i.e., where one word “falls” in relationship to another. The word comes from a Latin word meaning “falling, fall.” In other modern languages, adjectives have case, but in English, case applies only to nouns and pronouns.

Nominative/Subjective Case
When a noun is used as a) the subject of a verb or b) the complement of a being verb, it is said to be in the subjective or nominative case.

The king laughed heartily.
King is a noun in the subjective case because it is the subject of the verb laughed.

The king is the son of Eleanor of Aquitaine.
Son is a noun in the subjective case because it is the complement of the being verb is.

Accusative/Objective Case (This isn't accusing anyone of anything)
When a noun is used as the object of a verb or the object of a preposition, it is said to be in the objective or accusative case.

The king subdued his enemies.
Enemies is a noun in the objective case because it receives the action of the transitive verb subdued; it is the direct object of subdued.

The friends went to a movie.
Movie is a noun in the objective case because it is the object of the preposition to.

Sallie wrote Charlie a letter.
Charlie is a noun in the objective case because it is the indirect object of the verb wrote.

A transitive verb always has a direct object; sometimes, it will have a second object called the “indirect object.” In the old terminology, the indirect object was said to be in the “dative case.” Nowadays, the indirect object, like the direct object, is said to be in the accusative or objective case

Note: Some English teachers may still distinguish (as I once did) between the accusative and the dative, but the most recent college English textbook I have, (copyright 2000), does not even list the term “dative” in its index. As nouns and pronouns in the dative case are spelled the same as those in the objective case, there’s no practical reason to retain the former designation.

Genitive/Possessive Case

Of the three noun cases, only the possessive case is inflected (changes the way it is spelled).

Nouns in the possessive case are inflected by the addition of an apostrophe–with or without adding an “s.”

The boy’s shoe is untied.
Boy’s is a singular noun in the possessive case.

The boys’ shoes are untied.
Boys’ is a plural noun in the possessive case.

This one inflected noun case is the source of error for a great many native English speakers.

English pronouns are also a frequent source of error because they retain inflected forms to show subjective and objective case:

Pronouns in the subjective case: I, he, she, we, they, who
Pronouns in the objective case: me, him, her, us, them, whom

The pronouns you and it have the same form in both subjective and objective case.

Note: Strictly speaking, both my and mine and the other possessive forms are genitive pronoun forms, but students who have been taught that pronouns stand for nouns are spared unnecessary confusion when the teacher reserves the term “possessive pronoun” for words that actually do stand for nouns, like mine and theirs. Like adjectives, my, its, our, etc. stand in front of nouns, so it makes sense to call them “possessive adjectives.”

The objective form whom is almost gone from modern speech; the subjective form who has taken over in the objective case for many speakers. 

From: Daily Writing Tips

Cat Island - New Title from Saguaro Books

Cat Island
Donald Hankin

Product Dimensions: 5 0.4”  x 8” 

Pages: 191 pages

ISBN-10: 109556806X

ISBN-13: 978-1095568064 

Price : $9.95

The merchant ship Laconia sailing from London to the Virginia Colony is lost at sea. Only nine cats survive. They are washed up on a tropical island only to find they are not alone. There are dogs and cats from a previous human habitation who avoid each other and especially the evil Mousadonians, 9" tall mice, who enjoy terrorizing their neighbors. The arrival of the ship wrecked cats alters the dynamic of island life leading to an unlikely alliance.

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Uses of the Comma

A comma is a versatile punctuation mark, serving ten basic functions. Here’s an enumeration, with examples.
1. Separate the elements in a series: “Groucho, Harpo, and Chico developed the philosophy called Marxism.”
Many periodicals and websites, and most colloquially written books, omit the serial, or final, comma, but it is all but mandatory in formal writing and is recommended in all usage. As language maven Bryan Garner observes, “Omitting the serial comma may cause ambiguities, whereas including it never will.”
2. Separate coordinated independent clauses: “I like the Marx Brothers, but she thinks they’re too silly.” (An independent clause is one that can stand on its own as a sentence but is linked with another by a conjunction and/or a punctuation mark.)
Exceptions include sentences with closely linked clauses (“Go to the window and see who’s there”) and those with a compound predicate (“The Marx Brothers are known for their puns and their sight gags”).
3. Separate an introductory word (“Naturally, I agree with you”), phrase (“Last summer, I went on a long vacation”), or subordinate clause (“If you’re too busy now, wait until later”) from the remainder of the sentence.
4. Separate an optional parenthetical element from the remainder of the sentence. “We have, in a manner of speaking, won despite our loss.” (The phrase “in a manner of speaking” could also be set off by em dashes or parentheses, depending on whether the writer wishes to emphasize the interruption of the statement “We have won despite our loss” or wants to diminish it as an aside.)
5. Separate coordinate adjectives from each other: “I could really use a tall, cool drink right now.” (Do not separate non-coordinate adjectives with a comma; https://www.dailywritingtips.com/coordinate-and-noncoordinate-adjectives/ explains the difference between these two types of adjectives.)
6. Separate an attribution from a direct quotation: “She said, ‘Neither choice is very appealing’”; “‘That’s not my problem,’ he replied.” (A colon may be precede a formal pronouncement or an attribution that forms a complete thought, as in, “He had this to say: ‘Her point is irrelevant.” Omit punctuation when the attribution is implied, as in “Your response ‘Her point is irrelevant’ is evasive.”)
7. Separate a participial phrase or one lacking a verb from the remainder of the sentence: “Having said that, I still have my doubts”; “The deed done, we retreated to our hideout.”
8. Separate a salutation from a letter (“Dear friends,”) or a complimentary close from a signature in a letter (“Sincerely,”). A colon should be used in place of a comma in a formal salutation.
9. Separate elements when setting off a term for a larger geopolitical entity from that for a smaller one located within it (“Santa Barbara, California, is located on the coast”) and for elements of street addresses (“1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington, DC”) (and dates (“January 1, 2013”).
10. Separate groups of three digits in numbers: (Let me tell you how to make your first 100,000,000 dollars.” (Because large numbers are difficult to scan, it’s usually better to use one of the following forms: “100 million dollars,” “one hundred million dollars.”)

From

Daily Writing Tips