Found a good article about 形式名詞, which are those nouns like こと・もの・とおり・よう that are basically used as both normal nouns (usually using their kanji) and grammatical 'dummy nouns' (usually in hiragana), for want of a better description in English.
What's weird to me is that despite how central these are, they don't get mentioned explicitly in most of the grammar guides I've used.. N3 grammar is full of constructions that rely on these, but the resources I used never really named the concept. I had to do some digging to find out about them at all. I even searched this subreddit and it’s only come up a few times, surprisingly.
Also, did anyone else know that the 様 in 様子 is (or is related to) the grammatical よう? I knew about the other common ones, but this one surprised me.
Anyone else run into this term in their studies? Did your textbook actually explain it, or did you have to piece it together later like me?
by buchi2ltl