Interjections

Interjections have no grammatical association with a sentence in which they are used. This doesn’t disqualify them from being used frequently though. They are found more often in speech than in writing. However, fictional writing may use a lot of them when directly quoting the characters.

Examples:

• Oh!
• Ah
• Alas
• Eh
• Hey!
• Hi!
• Ahoy
• Bravo!
• Cheers
• Huh
• Whoa
• Wow
• Good grief
• Indeed!
• Umm

And so on. As you can see, the words are short exclamations which we use in expressing greetings, surprise, pain, joy, etc. They may be followed with a comma or an exclamation mark (!) to indicate a stronger emotion.




Examples:

• Ah: Used to express pleasure, surprise, realization, etc.
“Ah! I finish first!”
“Ah, now I get what you’re saying.”
“Ah, that feels relaxing.”

• Alas: Used to express grief.
“Alas, we lost the finals.”

• Well: Used to express surprise, bring forth a remark.
“Well, what happened next?”

• Er: Used to express hesitation.
“Er…I am not sure, is it correct?”

These are all emotional expressions. Formal academic writing rarely uses one except for quoting someone in direct speech.