Interjections

Interjections are short words or phrases that show emotion. It often stands alone, unconnected to a sentence and even hesitation. Interjection (noun): a part-of-speech that expresses emotion. It often stands alone, unconnected to a sentence.

Hello! That’s an interjection.

Interjections are short exclamations like Oh!, Um or Ah! They have no real grammatical value but we use them quite often, usually more in speaking than in writing.

When interjections are inserted into a sentence, they have no grammatical connection to the sentence.

Interjections are frequently followed by an exclamation mark (!), which itself is used to express emotion.

Interjections like er and um are also known as “hesitation devices”. They are extremely common in English. People use them when they don’t know what to say, or to indicate that they are thinking about what to say.

An interjection is one of the 9 parts of speech.

Typical interjections are:

• Ah! Er. Hey. Ouch! Umm.
• Oh my God! Bloody hell! Jesus H. Christ!

And here are some interjections in context:

• Hey! Don’t be so lazy!
• Well, let’s think about it.
• Ouch! That hurts!
• Lima is the capital of…er…Peru.

Interjections are not normally used in formal writing, but they are common in speech (and therefore informal and fiction writing), where they show emotions such as anger, surprise and interest as well as convey hesitation.

Here’s a list of Interjections