Is drifting her a gerund...how do you tell if a word is a gerund?

Hey, I read that news story -- are you in Colorado?

I'm not an expert on the terms for various parts of speech, but I believe that a gerund is the "-ing" form of a verb used as a noun -- for example, "Drifting from lane to lane is dangerous." I'm not sure what you would call "drifting' in your example -- maybe a present participle?

Hi!

I am learning gerund, and hopefully I could help you out with something that I learned.

Rule one: You have to use a gerund after some verbs, such as: admit, appreciate, avoid, consider, delay, deny, endure, enjoy...

Rule two: A lot of clauses are required gerund after them, such as be fond of, can't help, can't stand, feel like, give up, keep on, insist on, put off.

So is drifting a participle in this sentence? If so, I wonder why it wasn't preceded by a comma? And yeah, I'm in 'Rado!

Still wondering...

Hi Grammarshammer

It's a participle.


Christian Pruett and his wife were driving on Interstate 25 on Monday morning when they noticed a sport utility vehicle next to them (which was) drifting from lane to lane.

Since the participle directly follows the noun it modifies, my teacher would have told me to use a comma. But then again, I'm starting to notice that there is no definite way to punctuate participle phrases when they directly follow the word they modify. Some authors will only exclude the comma to avoid ambiguity, while others seem to never use it. I guess sometimes the use is at the authors’

hi,
as i know, gerund is a verbal noun.
eg.
i love cakes/ice-cream/singing.
cakes and ice-cream is a noun. therefore, if singing replace cakes or ice-cream in the sentence, singing is a noun and it act as a gerund.