As grammar nerds, we care a lot about correct grammar, spelling, and punctuation. If you’re a grammar lover, maybe you’ve found yourself fighting the urge to correct a misspelled menu item at a restaurant. Perhaps you’ve even corrected a “who” to a “whom” when your friend used the wrong word in a story.
When it comes to grammar correction and education, where is the line between agitating and helping?
After you finish writing something, do you read it over? Hopefully yes, but reading is not proofreading. The process of reading for enjoyment or information is significantly different from the process of proofreading. How so? To proofread is to examine a document with the express purpose of finding and correcting errors in grammar, spelling, and punctuation. Let’s compare and contrast reading and proofreading.
An imposter is a fraud, someone who pretends to be something they aren’t. Often, their motive is to steal or take advantage of others. However, some people who feel like imposters aren’t guilty of any crime. They haven’t intentionally misled anyone.
According to psychologists Pauline Rose Clance and Suzanne Imes, imposter syndrome affects many high-achieving individuals. You’ll be surprised at how many successful people don’t feel they deserve the praise they receive.
What do you think about the state of writing in the workplace? Share your thoughts in our weekly poll!
In November, Grammarly worked with ~300 writers from 27 countries (and 44 U.S. states) to write a group novel for National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo). We called the project #GrammoWriMo; and, clocking in at a total of 130,927 unedited words, we are proud to say that our draft was among the 41,940 completed! The infographic below shows which mistakes were the most common in our writers’ first drafts.
A quick example of the bleeding obvious: people speak differently in the UK and the US. If you’re an American fan of British TV shows—the originals, not the American remakes—you’re probably very aware that once in a while, the characters will utter a word that you won’t hear on the streets of your hometown.
But you may be surprised to know that some of the words we consider distinctly British today were once fairly common in the United States.
Whether you realize it or not, you’re a writer.
It’s hard not to be one in the information age, when writing is essential, if not inescapable. Maybe you’re keeping up with old friends and upcoming assignments. Or perhaps you’re trying to impress a hiring committee or a hot date. We’re constantly dashing off notes and status updates with a regularity that would’ve been the envy of anyone in the era of telegrams and typewriters, let alone the cloistered monks who hand-copied ancient scrolls by candlelight.
Do not check your email! Plenty of people with fancy credentials will tell you to avoid your email at all costs in the morning. Time management consultant Julie Morgenstern wrote a whole book about it. She told The Huffington Post that if you give in to the temptation, “you will never recover.” Personal development writer Sid Savara gives seven reasons not to check it. For starters, the requests in your email aren’t on your agenda of “things to do” yet.
The Not-So-Sweet 16 round of March MADness has begun! So far, we’ve started the voting for work chat pet peeves, and these two contenders are both pretty atrocious. Which habit annoys you more? Vote below!
Early-Morning Chatters
These folks are up in the wee small hours of the morning, sending out updates to group chats—either pinging you awake as you catch your last few hours of sleep or inundating your mornings with messages to attend to.
When writing a date, a comma is used to separate the day from the month, and the date from the year.
But if you’re writing the date in day-month-year format, you don’t need a comma.
Do use a comma if you’re including a day of the week with the date.
An essay is a brief composition on a specific topic. The most common essay types are analytical, argumentative, critical, expository, and narrative.
Students write essays. You knew that already. But do you know what kinds of essays students write? Here are the basics of how to write five different types of essays.
To analyze means to examine carefully or critically.
If writing dates has you stymied at times, it is probably for one of two reasons. The first is that date formats vary the world over, and we come across these different styles frequently in our reading. The second may be that you aren’t quite sure how to write dates with commas.
The key to overcoming your struggle with dates is to understand the prevailing conventions and then apply them clearly—and consistently.
Meeting someone in person is pretty straightforward. You smile, shake their hand, tell them your name. But what if you’re not meeting face to face? What if you’re introducing yourself via email?
Maybe you’re reaching out to create a new connection, to ask for advice, or a collaboration, or a job. How do you compete with the other 700 emails in their inbox and convince them a response to you is worthwhile?
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When it comes to writing and celebrity, most people assume all celebrities use ghostwriters. These stars—among others—prove that point wrong. We’ve analyzed a list of talented celebrities and built a quiz to help you find out which celebrity writer is just like you.
What do you think? Did we get it right? Share your reactions in the comments.
In November, Grammarly worked with around 300 writers from 27 countries (and 44 U.S. states) to write a group novel for National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo). We called the project #GrammoWriMo; and, clocking in at a total of 130,927 unedited words, we are proud to say that our draft was among the 41,940 completed!
We kicked off the editing process right away by running the text of the novel through our automated proofreader to check for spelling, grammar, and punctuation mistakes.
ESL TIP: This play on words intentionally misspells the phrase “bare minimum” as “bear minimum,” which, from the picture of this bear, looks to be quite relaxing.
Merry LitMas!
Just kidding, we’re only on the sixth day of LitMas, so we haven’t finished giving you gifts of well-read knowledge yet. Today, we’re departing from booklists and reading tips for something you can tap your toes to. That’s right, we’ve created a playlist of tunes inspired by famous works of literature. And we have to admit, we love the creativity behind all of these bookish songs.
When talking about things that are small, people use the word mini. For example, a small, short skirt is a miniskirt. A minirecession is a recession with a lesser impact than a full recession.
The past continuous tense, also known as the past progressive tense, refers to a continuing action or state that was happening at some point in the past. The past continuous tense is formed by combining the past tense of to be (i.e., was/were) with the verb’s present participle (-ing word).
There are many situations in which this verb tense might be used in a sentence. For example, it is often used to describe conditions that existed in the past.
How many different rules of grammar and punctuation exist? For every rule, there exists a person eager to publicly expose any rulebreakers. These vigilante defenders of grammatical order are grammar trolls. Here are thirteen types to watch out for.
In the world of writing, a red herring doesn’t refer to a fish. Instead, it’s misleading or distracting information.
If you are having a conversation, are you talking to or talking with someone? Is talking to someone different from talking with someone? Let’s settle the issue.
Some feel that talk to should be used only for one-sided conversations—when a television host addresses the viewers, perhaps, or when a boss reprimands an employee.
Nowadays means “at the present time.” It’s easy to use, but the spelling gives some people trouble.
There’s only one way to spell nowadays—as one word. Even though this adverb evolved from the Middle English now adays, spelling it as more than one word today is a mistake.
If you’re trying to market your brand or sell a product, a grammatical mistake or typo can hold you back from success. Find out how it can hinder you (with funny pictures for proof), why it matters, and what you can do to ensure clean copy.
A few spelling and grammatical errors won’t necessarily prevent people from buying your product. But a writing mistake, even a forgotten letter, can contradict what you’re trying to prove to your customers.
This poll is part of a series that Grammarly is running aimed at better understanding how the public feels about writing, language learning, and grammar.
Please take the poll and share your thoughts in the comments. We can’t wait to hear from you!
If you are interested in more, check out last week’s poll.
Accepting a job offer isn’t as simple as saying, “I’ll take it! When do I start?” It’s important to make sure you and your employer have covered all the bases and there’s no confusion. It’s best to accept a job offer with a letter of acceptance.
Prior to the official offer, you may take part in a brief little dance (sometimes called a supposal) where your potential employer says something like, “Suppose we want to offer you a position.
If you’re a good writer, never miss a chance to show off your writing skills. Think of your resume as an opportunity to tell the story of your candidacy. Why are you the right person for the job? How did you develop your skills? Why will you benefit the company? Let’s talk about how you can reflect your writing skills on your resume and how these talents can land you your dream job.
Words with shared roots often end up with similar meanings in modern use. Principle and principal are two such words. Both of them entered English through Old French.
This poll is part of a series that Grammarly is running aimed at better understanding how the public feels about writing, language learning, and grammar.
Please take the poll and share your thoughts in the comments. We can’t wait to hear from you!
If you are interested in more, check out last week’s poll.
We’ve all heard it before: The movie was great, but the book was so much better. No matter which version of the story you prefer, the great thing about book-to-movie adaptations is that you can enjoy the story twice: once on the page and again on the screen. Here are three young adult series we recommend you read before you see their on-screen counterparts:
In the film version of Divergent, the first book in the trilogy by Veronica Roth, Shailene Woodley does a wonderful job of conveying protagonist Tris Prior’s determination and bravery as the world around her changes into something she barely recognizes.
No matter what type of writing you do, it can be easy to miss your own mistakes in the editing process. Since you wrote the words, you often read what you intended to write (and not what is actually written). You can’t see any flaws in your writing because you’re just too close to it.
Use these five tips to edit your own work more effectively — and to improve your writing.
1. Let Your Writing Rest for a Few Hours or Days
This poll is part of a series that Grammarly is running aimed at better understanding how the public feels about writing, language learning, and grammar.
Please take the poll and share your thoughts in the comments. We can’t wait to hear from you!
If you are interested in more, check out last week’s poll.
You probably have been told more than once that double negatives are wrong and that you shouldn’t use them. However, usually, it’s left at that — without any explanation of what exactly a double negative is or why it’s considered incorrect (in standard English). We want to fix that. Here is the essential list of things you must understand about double negatives.
We already touched on the difference between between and among when we talked about the difference between among and amongst. But let’s take a closer look at these two commonly confused words. We might even dispel a grammar myth in the process.
There’s a common and oddly persistent belief that between should be used only when there are two elements, and among should be used when there are more than two elements.
Is emigrate an alternative spelling of immigrate? If not, what’s the difference between immigrate and emigrate?
Emigrate is not an alternative spelling of immigrate.
“An adventure awaits,” “an escape from the ordinary”— travel ads often promise journeyers a chance to leave the ennui of their normal lives. But did you know that you don’t have to board a plane reach an exotic, remote location? In escapist literature, writers create a rich, absorbing environment for their characters. Readers live vicariously in a captivating alternative reality. While the characters in the novel run for their lives or fall head over heels in love, the readers unwind and enjoy the experience from the safety of the real world.
If you were a novel written during a special month, what novel would you be? Take this quiz and find out which classic novel corresponds with your personality!
In the quiz, you will be presented with multiple-choice questions. There are no right or wrong answers. Just choose the answer that most closely matches how you feel or what you think. Have fun!
There is a light and dark side to the balance of office life. Which way do you lean? Find out whether you’re an Office Jedi or Sith with our fun quiz!
What do you think, did we get it right? Share your reactions in the comments.
There’s only one way to write nowhere, somewhere, and anywhere, and that is as one word. If you write them as no where, some where, and any where, you’re making a mistake.
We’ve all found ourselves distracted from things we should be doing. A 2014 study found that a whopping 87 percent of high school and college students are self-professed procrastinators. Odds are good that you’ve found yourself distracted when you know you should be focused on a task. Is there a cure? Let’s take a look at how to avoid the pitfalls of common distractions.
Distractions are everywhere, and the Internet doesn’t help.
It’s hard to keep up with a language evolving as fast as English. Before you know it, a new turn of phrase has come and gone before you can say selfie. That’s so passé. Do try to keep up. Let’s have a look at some trends from 2015.
1 Portmanteaus, or word mashups
It’s been climbing the charts for a few years now, but in 2015, the portmanteau officially arrived. Portmanteaus are nothing new, but lately they’re “spiviralling” out of control.
When everything is about to change, the air becomes still. The sky turns a nondescript color of gray and people throw themselves into normalcy with a sense of purpose usually reserved for special occasions. They’ll walk through town and wave brightly to familiar faces, laugh a little too loudly, and buy a loaf of bread for dinner. All the while, they’ll readjust protective amulets and spend an extra minute in front of a household lararium, understanding that their reality will soon shift ever-so-slightly from its axis and life will never be the same again.
Your alarm fails to go off and you wake up twenty minutes late. You take a hasty shower, and for some reason the water temperature will only fluctuate between tepid and truly frigid. Despite those setbacks, you manage to grab a cup of coffee for the ride in, which you promptly spill down the front of your shirt. Then, when you arrive at the office you learn that your partner on a critical project has called in sick.
Every industry has its jargon. But some words and phrases can be unclear, unnecessary, or even offensive. Maybe some of these are phrases you like building into your business vocab, but use them with caution. If you’re going to offend or annoy someone, or if there’s a clearer way to say something, why not go the easy way?
Our little caveat: every office has different protocol. If you’re buddies with your coworkers, it’s not so strange to talk to them about personal issues.
Can’t? Cannot? Can not? Find out the right way to use all three.
Can’t is a contraction of cannot, and as such it’s sometimes unsuitable for formal writing. In everyday writing and in speaking, it’s ubiquitous:
Cannot is better for formal writing:
If you win the morning, you win the day.
Mornings set the tone for your day. If your habits are bad or simply uninspiring, they’ll steamroll your productivity and focus for the whole day. This week, we looked at what a range of successful people do in the morning. Groups included up-and-coming millennials, productivity hackers, and various kinds of leaders. Here’s a sampling of what they had in common.
The present perfect tense refers to an action or state that either occurred at an indefinite time in the past (e.g., we have talked before) or began in the past and continued to the present time (e.g., he has grown impatient over the last hour). This tense is formed by have/has + the past participle.
The construction of this verb tense is straightforward. The first element is have or has, depending on the subject the verb is conjugated with.
You can’t leave the Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows after reading only ten entries, and you can’t spread the word about one of the best websites on the Internet in just one article. So here we go, ten more words from the great fictional dictionary describing feelings and sensations you’ll recognize as soon as you read their descriptions.
Ambedo is the melancholic, almost hypnotic state you get into when you focus on sensory details like the flickering of a candle or tall trees swaying in the wind and you start thinking about the frailty of life.
It’s Saint Patrick’s Day! Walk into any department or grocery store at this time of year, and you may find yourself surrounded by leprechaun hats, green shirts, rainbow banners, shamrock-shaped candy, and other Irish-themed paraphernalia. Embedded in these symbols of Irish tradition is the idea of luck (good, bad, and uncertain) and the language associated with luck.
With that, here are some luck-related idioms commonly used in the English language:
The phrase as well as creates one of those situations where you may have to make a judgment call about comma usage. As a general rule, you don’t need a comma before as well as.
As well as means “in addition to.”
The sentence above means that you should proofread for both spelling and grammatical errors.
You probably know that the choice between is vs. are depends on a noun. In most sentences, the noun comes before the verb.
Everybody loves a compliment. Or is it a complement they love? If there is a published list of commonly confused words, complement and compliment are almost certain to appear. However, these two terms don’t have to be on your personal list of befuddling vocabulary! Here’s the breakdown.
What follows a fantastic vacation? For many, it’s the post-vacation blues. What you might not realize is that small, correctable mistakes may be the cause of your slump. Let’s learn the eight most avoidable of these errors so you can return from your next vacation on a high note.
1 Staying Gone Too Long
How can you guarantee yourself a horrifically stressful Monday? Arrive home from vacation late Sunday night!
Of the three billion or so people on Earth who enjoy web access, roughly half speak – and write – mainly in English. If they’re at all like a typical Grammarly user, they crank out around a thousand words each week, mainly in email, social media, blogs, and the like.
One other thing folks writing on the Internet do a good bit of is make mistakes. We routinely mangle proper spellings, savage the rules of punctuation, email sensitive details to the wrong person, and mix up words – say by referring to an ambidextrous baseball pitcher as “amphibious” while hurriedly dashing off a newspaper headline.
When spoken aloud, would of and its fellows should of and could of sound exactly like would’ve, could’ve and should’ve. But even if no one can tell the difference when you’re speaking, the mistake becomes obvious as soon as you write it down.
When people write would of, should of, could of, will of or might of, they are usually confusing the verb have with the preposition of.
As Mark Twain once wrote, “Substitute ‘damn’ every time you’re inclined to write ‘very’; your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be.”
Unnecessary modifiers make your writing weak and bloated, burying your message in a deluge of quites and rathers. These modifiers add no value to the sentences in which they appear. The first step to fixing the problem is identifying the filler words in your writing.
You’re at your desk, writing an email and minding your own business, when you overhear your officemates chatting nearby. They’re casually discussing climate change, a topic you’re passionate about. You could weigh in and drop some serious knowledge on them, but if you do, you’re likely to be engaged in a debate. Should you resist the urge or jump into the fray? It’s a tricky question.
Contractions. Everyone has messed up a contraction at one time or another. Sometimes these errors happen because a writer misunderstands the purpose of contractions, but most of the time they’re simply typos. Whatever the reason for your mistakes, we’ve got you covered.
If you don’t quite know the rules for contractions, you can brush up with our handbook.
If typos are your problem, try our free browser extension for help catching those keyboard slips (plus many other types of writing errors).
We all make mistakes. Sometimes, we even embrace them.
Such is the case with language. The words you’re reading right now are the product of centuries of slang, corruption, amalgamation, and lazy habits. The writers of today gently nudge future evolutions of English by choosing which mistakes will be acceptable tomorrow. (For instance, where you use verbs like “stung” and “stunk,” experts believe future writers may instead opt for “stinged” and “stinked.”)
Did moms come up with Mother’s Day as an easy way to get pancakes in bed? Did activists fight for its adoption as a way to get folks to focus on peace? Or did card companies invent it as a way to make a few (billion) bucks?
If you answered all of the above, you’re right. Well, at least partially. Peace activists did play a role in early versions of Mother’s Day, and makers of cards and candy (not to mention florists) do get to rake in the rewards the second week of May every year.
Each vs. every is a common grammar issue, even for proficient writers, because let’s face it—they’re very similar words. Although both words refer to something that is singular, each refers to an individual object or person, while the term every refers to a group of objects or people lumped together as one. For example, consider the following sentences:
I once worked remotely for a company that had a regular content editor meeting every Friday. That meeting was the bane of my working existence. We’d all gather on a conference call line starting at 10 a.m. We’d arrive with good intentions, but inevitably no one had an agenda and we’d walk away (sometimes hours later) without having reached any actionable conclusions. The only thing anyone would act on would be to take a few minutes at the start of next week’s meeting to bemoan the lack of things we accomplished with the previous one.
When you’re in a hurry, you might write “it’s” when you really mean “its,” or the other way around. You need to be aware of this mistake and know when to use which.
It’s is a contraction of “it is” or “it has.” Its is a possessive determiner we use to say that something belongs to or refers to something.
It’s and its are among the most commonly confused words. They are pronounced the same, there’s a very small difference in how they’re written, and it’s also easy to mistake the contraction in it’s for a possessive.
You’ve already taken ten deep breaths, made coffee, gone on a walk, had a snooze, made more coffee, looked at colossal lists of inspiring ideas, and made another cup of coffee for good measure. It’s time to break out the big guns—er, pens.
Everyone has their way to push through mental blocks and get things done . . . but what are the weirdest strategies? Here are eight odd but useful ways to reset your brain.
As we get nearer to the end of December, we are reminded of why it’s called the most wonderful time of the year. It’s the season of holidays, with Christmas, Kwanzaa, Hanukkah, and Mawlid usually celebrated within a month of one another. And then there’s the New Year, a great opportunity to commit ourselves to plans and resolutions we’ll never actually make good on. This time of year is a great opportunity to remind ourselves of some of the words we have at our disposal to express all the wonder that’s going on.
Considering all the time you spend at the office, it’s no surprise that your workspace, coworkers, and overall approach to everyday tasks have a big influence on your morale. We’ve all been there: you’re chatting with colleagues and you get a little heavy-handed with the emojis, or you’ve got an update most of your team will enjoy so you pop it into the general chat. It seems innocuous enough, but as it turns out, these—and other—little tendencies can really get under others’ skin.
Who’s is a contraction linking the words who is or who has, and whose is the possessive form of who. They may sound the same, but spelling them correctly can be tricky. To get into the difference between who’s and whose, read on.
Correlative pairs of conjunctions include words like neither…nor, not…but, and both…and. For this punctuation rule, we can also consider sets of words like not only…but also. When pairs or sets of conjunctions are being used, they do not need to be separated from each other by a comma. However, a comma may be used between the conjunctions to accommodate another grammar rule (see Exceptions).
Have you heard the expression “barking up the wrong tree?” According to North Carolina State University, there are 23,000 different kinds of trees. What type of tree is incorrect? Idioms can be puzzling, but perhaps less so when you learn more about the phrases. Let’s delve into six interesting idiomatic expressions.
Hunters sometimes use scent hounds to locate and pursue animals.
The words disinterested and uninterested are sometimes used as if they have the same meaning. But there is a difference, and to avoid confusion, you should be aware of what that difference is.
When someone doesn’t have a vested interest in a matter, or doesn’t have a horse in that race, we can say that this person is disinterested.
You’ve been invited to a second interview—well done! But don’t get too comfortable just yet. If you’ve been asked to interview a second time, you’re likely up against the company’s top few candidates. That means the stakes are higher than ever, and you need to prepare to give the interview all you’ve got.
Think of the first interview as the getting-to-know-you phase.
If you’ve ever fantasized about wielding a red pencil that could correct grammatical mistakes in the text messages you receive, you’re in for a treat. There’s a new app on iTunes called Grammar Snob, and it gives you the ability to correct grammatical mistakes in texts. All you need to do is download it, wait until you receive a text message containing one of the mistakes covered by the app, place a corresponding sticker over the mistake, and hit send.
Too many choices can sometimes confuse you, but with no one, it’s easy to learn which should be your go-to spelling.
The correct way to spell no one is as two words, without the hyphen:
Misusing bad and badly is a common grammatical mistake. The word bad is an adjective and should be used to modify nouns and pronouns. Badly, like most words ending in -ly, is an adverb and is used to modify verbs. The thing that trips most people up is that linking verbs such a to be and to feel take adjectives rather than adverbs.
Why do people use bad and badly incorrectly so often in their writing?
The adverbs continuously and continually (and their corresponding adjectives, continuous and continual) are words that are confused easily and often. Continuously describes an action that happens without ceasing. Continually, on the other hand, describes an action that recurs frequently or regularly.
The confusion about whether to use continually or continuously is understandable, because both words share the same Latin root, continuare, meaning “to join together or connect.” Only the endings of the words are different, and over time, the two words have evolved with subtly distinct meanings.
Happy Mother’s Day! How are you celebrating? Breakfast in bed? A handmade card? For many people, an even bigger question than what to do for Mother’s Day is where to place the apostrophe in Mother’s Day.
Some people write “Mothers’ Day,” based on the logic that it is the day to celebrate all mothers. Others simply write “Mothers Day,” leaving out the apostrophe altogether, possibly because they’re unsure of where to place it.
A common English error is to misuse the words good and well. The rule of thumb is that good is an adjective and well is an adverb. Good modifies a noun; something can be or seem good. Well modifies a verb; an action can be done well. However, when you’re talking about health, well can be used as an adjective.
All you need to remember when you are pondering whether good or well is best for your sentence is that good modifies a person, place, or thing, whereas well modifies an action.
Faint: Lacking strength; inclined to swoon; lacking in courage, spirit, or energy; lacking distinctness; hardly perceptible. For example: Due to the summer heat, she began to feel dizzy and faint. In the early morning hours, the sunlight is faint on the horizon. The music in the background was faint and hardly perceptible.
Feint: A movement made to confuse the opponent, a dummy; that which is feigned; an assumed or false appearance; an offensive movement resembling an attack in all but its continuance.
Despite all our smarts and scientific advancements, there is still a lot we don’t know about the phenomenon of human language. We don’t know what the first human language sounded like. We don’t know exactly where, how, or when it came to be. We may never be able to find out—there’s an overwhelming lack of data to work with. What we can say, however, is that once we figured out how to create language, we went ahead and created a bunch of them.
Few punctuation marks have as exciting a name as the interrobang. But what does the interrobang do?
The interrobang combines the question mark (?) and the exclamation point (!) into a single punctuation mark. It conveys a question asked in an excited way. For example:
Introverts are energized by solitude rather than social activities. We value deep connections. We’re better listeners than we are talkers, at least where chatty small talk is concerned. Unfortunately, job interviews require us to be gregarious, make only a superficial connection, and chit-chat. About ourselves. The horror!
I was well into adulthood before my extroverted dad admitted that, despite my preferring solitude and books over people, I turned out pretty okay.
May 5 is National Teacher Day. In advance of the holiday, it’s important to remember that you wouldn’t be where you are today without the teachers who influenced you throughout your life. Whether your favorite educators are from elementary school, high school, or college, make sure to tell them what a positive effect they’ve had on your life. Here are six ways to celebrate National Teacher Day.
I.e. and e.g. are both Latin abbreviations. E.g. stands for exempli gratia and means “for example.” I.e. is the abbreviation for id est and means “in other words.” Remember that E is for example (e.g.) and that I and E are the first letters of in essence, an alternative English translation of i.e.
But why bother with all this Latin? Don’t we have enough abbreviations in English?
Think about it.
What is the difference between sometime and some time? And where does sometimes fit into the equation? Don’t worry, the answer is simpler than you might think.
There are two ways to use sometime as one word.
An en dash is a mid-sized dash (longer than a hyphen but shorter than an em dash) that is mostly used to show ranges in numbers and dates. It can also be used for clarity in forming complex compound adjectives. The en dash derives its name from the fact that it is meant to be the same width as the letter N.
A properly executed en dash is especially important in scientific and mathematical writing because it is used between numbers to represent the wordto.
In honor of National Poetry Month, writer Antonella Gazzardi has contributed a poem about grammar for your reading pleasure!
Every weekday in April, we will be sharing a poem, an excerpt of poetry, or a feature on a poet. Our celebration will feature poetry from every era, and we ask our friends to join us throughout the month by sharing their favorite poetry under the tag #PoetryMonth.
Guest post from Emily Green
Well, it took a decade, but it’s finally happened. People text so much that they’ve forgotten how to use proper grammar. What’s worse, it seems like the general population is accommodating them. This needs to stop. Let’s look at why text messaging is butchering grammar and what we can do to stop it.
Typing Shorthand is the Popular Style
You may not know what shorthand is by its name, but you’ve definitely seen it.
It’s no wonder that many people misspell the phrase “whet your appetite.” After all, your mouth waters when your appetite is stirred, so why wouldn’t the phrase be spelled as “wet your appetite”?
In its most literal sense, “whet” means to sharpen like you would a knife or blade. When used in the phrase “whet your appetite,” it means to arouse interest or eagerness, to metaphorically sharpen your appetite.
“Actually, it’s fewer.”
As soon as the words came out of my mouth, I wanted to take them back. An acquaintance had just made the dreaded less-fewer slipup in casual conversation, and I had begun to correct him before I realized two things: I didn’t know this person well enough to correct his grammar in an email, let alone in a quip uttered on a Friday night. My correction could easily come off as patronizing advice, or worse, a jab at his intelligence.
Does your writing feel cluttered?
Over winter, you fell into the habit of drafting dense paragraphs that feel stuffy and humid, like a cramped apartment with a wheezing, determined radiator. Or your structure fell into madness, like a closet seething with mysterious solvents, loathsome sporting gear, and drawers of mismatched screws.
Now’s the time to dust off your style, haul out the verbiage, and ready your next project for sunshine and daffodils.
One of the most miraculous aspects of J.K. Rowling’s wizarding world is that it’s just so darn big. If you’re an aspiring author, you may wonder just how Rowling managed to crank out so many books, use so much imagination, and keep the ideas flowing.
Here’s a secret: she didn’t just wave a magic wand. She wrote every single one of the 1,084,170 words in the Harry Potter series (and lots more in her other books, plays, and movies).
Image from LoadingArtist.com
Almost anyone who cares about language and knows about or uses the Internet has been guilty at one time or another of demonizing the world wide web for its effects on the English language. “The Internet makes it easy for people, including professional writers, to publish writing publicly without editing.” “The Internet encourages casual writing and doesn’t reinforce proper writing skills.” “Students would write better if they weren’t on Facebook all the time.” It’s easy to blame the Internet and say that if it didn’t exist, written English would be on solid ground.
You hire a fashion consultant to help you redesign your wardrobe. He tells you to get rid of your most recently acquired shoes. You gasp in surprise because you bought the shoes only a couple of days ago. All the celebrities are wearing them. How can they not be fashionable? You may ask the same thing about helping verbs. Aren’t they always in fashion? The short answer is no. New words are always emerging.
Some words have multiple correct spellings. You probably already know this is true for certain verbs (e.g., spell vs. spelt) and several nouns (e.g., color, favor, neighbor); prepositions aren’t immune to it either.
Commas may be placed after the closing parenthesis but not before either the opening or the closing parenthesis. If the sentence would not require any commas if the parentheses were removed, the sentence should not have any commas when the parentheses are present.
You’ve likely seen writers use parentheses to set apart information from the main sentence. But do you know how to use them correctly?
Your co-worker just sent you a message on Slack:
Bossy McBosserpants
I need the report as soon as possible
What runs through your head? Along with potential anxiety about a looming deadline (looks like you’re eating lunch at your desk again) you may feel annoyance. After all, that demand sounded pretty darn pushy.
via GIPHY
Requests that include “as soon as possible” (or the ubiquitous acronym ASAP) can come across as rude.
As Major League Baseball gears up for the All-Star Game, Grammarly teamed up with The Wall Street Journal once again to see which team has the most grammatically correct fans. We looked at all 30 official MLB team sites and analyzed the top 150 comments for spelling, grammar, and punctuation errors. Each team had an average of over 10,000 words.
The Cleveland Indians hit a home run making the fewest mistakes (just 3.6 mistakes per 100 words) while the New York Mets strike out making 13.9 mistakes per 100 words.
Verbs tell you what the subject of a sentence or clause is doing (or being). Verbs are conjugated according to person, number, gender, tense, aspect, mood, or voice.
Verbs are at the heart of sentences and clauses; they are indispensable to the formation of a complete thought. A verb can express a thought by itself (with the subject implied) and be understood.
These idioms about animals are the cat’s meow. Here’s a short list of animal-related idioms and what they mean:
What do you think about the state of writing in the workplace? Share your thoughts in our weekly poll!
If you need to emphasize a word or a particular fact in a sentence, you can use italics to stress it. That said, italics and other font changes lose their impact if overused. It is best to use such devices sparingly and rely on strong writing and strategic word placement to get your point across.
Before the advent of word processing, it was common to underline words to show emphasis.
The vocabulary of modern English owes a lot of its richness to borrowing words from other languages, but it borrows from some languages much more than others. We have only one word of Finnish origin in common use, but it’s a good one. Sauna, a direct import from Finland, pulls double-duty as our word for a relaxing steam bath and as the perfect way to describe gloriously hot, humid summer days.
Even though the words aid and aide have similar meanings, are written similarly, and are pronounced the same, they cannot be used interchangeably.
Aid can be a verb, a noun, or an adjective. It is synonymous with the words “help” or “assist” when used as a verb, and again “help” and “assistance” when used as a noun:
Let’s get the bad news over with first: no matter how much you write, it will probably never become the kind of mindlessly automatic task for which you’re fully free to zone out.
In other words, writing steadily for an afternoon will never be as meditative as a long drive down an empty highway. You have to keep filling the progress bar yourself. Seated at the keyboard, every moment a writer spends mentally compiling a grocery list or critiquing the coffee shop’s playlist is a moment that zero writing is done.
This poll is part of a series that Grammarly is running aimed at better understanding how the public feels about writing, language learning, and grammar.
Please take the poll and share your thoughts in the comments. We can’t wait to hear from you!
If you are interested in more, check out last week’s poll.
Conditional verbs are used to create conditional sentences, which express hypothetical or unlikely situations. Conditional verbs can be used in the past, present, or future tense, and auxiliary verbs like can/could, will/would, and may/might are important in forming conditionals.
Consider the following conditional sentences, and pay close attention to the conditional verbs in each of them:
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Are you curious how all the celebrities did? Learn more about our #GrammarDay MVPs in our recent study.
Written communication isn’t easy. If it was, there would be no misunderstandings on social media, and we would never have to go back and clarify something we’d written after the fact. But that’s not the world we live in.
The need to improve one’s writing skills isn’t reserved only for those who want to be published novelists or award-winning journalists—there are endless benefits to being able to communicate through the written word.
Countable nouns refer to items that can be counted, even if the number might be extraordinarily high (like counting all the people in the world, for example). Countable nouns can be used with articles such as a/an and the or quantifiers such as a few and many. Look at the sentence below and pay particular attention to the countable noun:
Cat is singular and countable.
40 (forty) is the number that follows 39 and precedes 41. Though it’s related to the number “four” (4), the modern spelling of 40 is “forty.” The older form, “fourty,” is treated as a misspelling today. The modern spelling could reflect a historical pronunciation change.
If you catch yourself misspelling the name of this number as fourty, you’re not alone. It’s a common mistake, both in print and online:
Are there certain phrases in English that you can never quite remember? Chances are, others have the same difficulty. Here are some of the most commonly confused expressions in English.
I couldn’t care less So you do care! That’s what you’ll be saying if you say what many others mistakenly do: I could care less.
By accident If you say this wrong, you might have learned it from a native speaker.
Sentences may contain many different types of clauses. Defining clauses, also called restrictive clauses, serve an important function. What role do they play in sentences and how does it relate to the name of these clauses?
First, let’s lay some groundwork. A subject, verb, and a relative pronoun (who, whose, where, when, which, or that) distinguish relative clauses from other types of clauses, though not all three are needed.
You are battling toward the nexus in a 5v5-ranked game late on a Wednesday night. You have to work the next day and know you are not going to get enough sleep. But fear not! Your dedication to League of Legends is helping more than just your online rep. It’s helping you to be a better team player by teaching you these five valuable lessons in communicating under pressure.
On the ninth day of LitMas . . .
. . . you get nine wonderful novellas!
Novellas tend to fly under the radar. Readers know what to expect from short stories, and they know what they’re getting into with novels, but novellas fall into an ill-defined space somewhere between short story and novel. Some people think of them simply as very short novels—others have more specific criteria.
Some people spring out of bed on Monday feeling fresh, relaxed, and eager to get back to work. But I’m not convinced those with boundless energy and enthusiasm are of this world. I woke this morning, dragged myself out of bed, showered in a half-dead daze, and made a beeline for my French press to brew some Sumatra roast. For most of us, getting back into the work week can be rough.
Welcome back to the Not-So-Sweet 16! Today, we have two powerhouse email competitors that vie for the enviable title of “most annoying email habit.” Which do you think is worse, sneaky CCs or mass forwards?
Boss CC Sneak Attack:
Occasionally, there is a reason to CC your manager on an email about a project or issue you’re working on. This is not one of those times. The “sneak attack” occurs when someone adds your boss to a thread in order to intimidate you or encourage a specific outcome.
It’s no secret that some of the finest pieces of literature ever written were authored by members of the LGBT community. From the poetry of Walt Whitman to the landmark plays of Tony Kushner, it’s impossible to overstate the impact LGBT authors have had in American literature. In honor of Pride Month, here are five of the most important and influential LGBT writers of all time.
Oscar Wilde
This poll is part of a series that Grammarly is running aimed at better understanding how the public feels about writing, language learning, and grammar.
Please take the poll and share your thoughts in the comments. We can’t wait to hear from you!
If you are interested in more, check out last week’s poll.
We invent words all the time: movie, jeggings, Internet . . . Did you know underwhelmed has only been around since the 1950s? Of course, we drop words just as often. When was the last time you met a cordwainer? But important words tend to stick around and influence other words in all kinds of interesting ways. Let’s take a look at one of these words, which also happens to be one we hear a lot this time of year: peace.
Linking verbs are verbs that serve as a connection between a subject and further information about that subject. They do not show any action; rather, they “link” the subject with the rest of the sentence. The verb to be is the most common linking verb, but there are many others, including all the sense verbs.
A handful—a very frequently used handful—of verbs are always linking verbs:
To many Americans, Super Bowl Sunday is synonymous with junk food, cheering, the best new commercials, and possibly the sensation of winning (or losing) a war. People in other countries sometimes wonder if the prize is a very large bowl.
It’s not just the fascination with football that befuddles non-Americans—it’s the very words we use to describe it. That goes for sports-related words in general, especially when we compare certain terms in American English to their British counterparts.
Guest post from Jennifer Parris, Career Writer for FlexJobs
On the surface, a job description might seem fairly straightforward. It lists the job title, a smattering of responsibilities, and contact info by which you can apply for the position. But upon a second reading, you’re sure to find many layers to the posting, full of nuances and hidden messages that a seasoned job seeker might be able to pick up.
If the title of this post doesn’t make any sense, it shouldn’t.
This is going somewhere, I promise! Bear with me.
Today, while scouring Tumblr and various forums for “The Best Picture on the Internet,” I came across the following:
I am certain that most people read to the last frame and, caught up in Johnny Carson’s joke, didn’t think twice about whether or not Dean Martin knew what a dangling participle is.
Watching too much TV is bad for your health. According to some sources, being a couch potato will make you less smart. It will consume your time, influence your social relationships, affect your physical health in a very bad way, affect your emotional well-being, and skew your worldview. And the list goes on.
But this isn’t an article about the perils of TV watching. It’s an article about why books might be a better pastime (or passion, if you get to that level) for you to pick up.
How do you feel when you can’t communicate your ideas or emotions? If you find it frustrating, why not make a study of communication skills? Learning to communicate is like learning to swim. You progress from breathing exercises in a few feet of water to practicing laps in deeper water. Before you know it, you’re ready for the diving board. Let’s review some books, starting with some simple fixes based on personal experiences.
There are certain punctuation standards in British English that are important for a writer to understand. Even the most insightful article might be dismissed by readers because of punctuation errors, even if they have nothing to do with the merit of the content. Some mistakes crop up time and time again, making them understandable, but all the harder to excuse. Consider these punctuation pitfalls in British English that often trap the unwary.
It stalks the thick jungles of prose, confounding even the most experienced grammar explorer or navigator, yet it’s a gentle, mistaken, and forlorn creature. What am I talking about? The hyphen—the piece of punctuation that not even seasoned editors can seem to get right.
Super high-profile ad agencies and industry giants, despite large budgets and an intelligent workforce, are known to make hyphen mistake after mistake, unable to get a handle on correct hyphen usage.
If you read a lot, you probably have an excellent vocabulary. But it also means that you may know a lot of words that you’ve only seen in writing and never heard spoken aloud. Sometimes even common words are easy to misread. Language enthusiasts have coined the term “misle” for a word that leads you to incorrect assumptions about its pronunciation. It comes from the word misled (as in, the past tense of mislead), which many language lovers admit to misreading at one time or another as the past tense of some imaginary verb along the lines of “to misle.”
1 The simplest things in life are the ones you should appreciate the most.
“What I like best in the whole world is Me and Piglet going to see You, and You saying ‘What about a little something?’ and Me saying, ‘Well, I shouldn’t mind a little something, should you, Piglet,’ and it being a hummy sort of day outside, and birds singing.”
2 Bad things are less bad if you have friends to help you.
Happy Dictionary Day!
October 16, 1758, was the birthdate of the American lexicographer Noah Webster. If you’ve ever wondered who decided that Americans should write color while the British write colour, Noah Webster is your guy.
To celebrate our love of lexicography, here are ten wonderful words to add to your vocabulary today:
Antipode n. A direct or extreme opposite. Angelica often gets into heated conversations with Duane, her ideological antipode.
People use both further and farther to mean “more distant.” However, American English speakers favor farther for physical distances and further for figurative distances.
Ray LeBlond once said “You learn something every day if you pay attention.” Today is the day to learn the difference between further and farther.
Unsurprisingly, farther means “at or to a greater distance.” In Salt to the Sea, Ruta Sepetys uses this adverb to describe the activity of some sea vessels: Some boats eventually floated ashore.
Most of the time, you should not use a comma before because when it connects two clauses in a sentence. Because is a subordinating conjunction, which means that it connects a subordinate clause to an independent clause; good style dictates that there should be no comma between these two clauses. An exception can and should be made when the lack of a comma would cause ambiguity.
Because has a straightforward job to do in the English language.
This poll is part of a series that Grammarly is running aimed at better understanding how the public feels about writing, language learning, and grammar.
Please take the poll and share your thoughts in the comments. We can’t wait to hear from you!
If you are interested in more, check out last week’s poll.
Smosh gets 100% credit for commitment. These grammar-loving cops don’t kid around!
You’re having an average morning at the office, when suddenly word ripples out from the corner suite: the boss is going to visit a major potential client this afternoon, and she wants the latest version of the demo ready to show off. A wave of adrenaline sweeps the room—this is all hands on deck.
The copywriter and designers launch into vetting every scrap of text and making sure every element on the screen will be pixel-perfect.
Gender-neutral pronouns are nouns that stand in for one’s name but do not reflect the sex of the referenced person. In contrast, he, she, him, her, his, hers, etc. are gendered pronouns, reflecting the sex of the referenced person. Many gender activists and even some linguists argue that plural gender-neutral pronouns — like they, them, their — are not acceptable substitutes for the unwieldy ‘his or her’, ‘he or she’ and ‘himself or herself’ constructions.
Contractions are useful in both spoken and written language. They save time, use fewer letters than full words, and help us to sound less formal when the situation calls for it. Contractions are combinations of two words and, in most cases, the apostrophe indicates where letters are omitted. Here’s a handy list of contractions.
Common contractions Do + not = Don’t (The apostrophe tells us that a letter, O, has been removed.) Are/is + not = Aren’t/isn’t They + are = They’re It + is/has = It’s Could/Would/Should + have = Could’ve/Would’ve/Should’ve Could/Would/Should + not = Couldn’t/Wouldn’t/Shouldn’t We + are = We’re Will + not = Won’t (This is the slight exception to the rule that the apostrophe replaces the dropped letters.
English is anything but a straightforward language. Words that look alike but actually mean something slightly different are a common source of confusion. Take conscious, conscience, unconscious, and unconscionable. All are derived from the same root, so it’s natural to assume that the first two are the opposite of the last two. But use them interchangeably like this and you are likely to confuse (and possibly amuse) your listeners.
“Set your intention.”
How does that make you feel? Inspired? Or did the flash of a pseudo-spiritual yoga sesh make you cringe?
You will be happy to know that intention-setting isn’t just for yoga buffs and the meditative among you. Observationally, psychologists have found evidence of greater levels of achievement when daily intentions are set and revisited.
Likewise, it’s important to understand that intentions are different things for different people.
Clauses are groups of words that contain a subject and a verb. Why should you care about them? Have you ever told someone you loved them? Or written a letter to a friend? Likely, you did it with the help of clauses. You would find your ability to communicate severely limited if you had to express your thoughts without these serviceable units of speech. Why, even asking why you should care about clauses would be impossible!
If someone called you a statue, you might not find it so flattering. However, if someone called you statuesque, you would probably thank them for the compliment.
In the battle for the worst call habits, we’ve had some solid contenders. Our followers overwhelmingly agreed that background noise and calling instead of chatting in person are two of the worst. Do you agree? Vote for the absolute worst below.
Background Noise Nuisances
We’ve all joined a call where the other participants sounded like they were either in an echo chamber, a wind tunnel, or the middle of Times Square.
To hear some people tell it, one of the great hallmarks of the holiday season is singing carols–think Jingle Bell Rock, Silent Night, and Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer. But interestingly, many carolers don’t actually stop to consider the words of these popular holiday songs.
Commonly misunderstood song lyrics can be hilarious or downright confusing–so as word nerds, the Grammarly team decided to take a closer look.
A flyer, a circular, a leaflet, a pamphlet, a handbill—so many words for one simple thing. A piece of paper with words and images printed on it that gets handed out on a street.
According to History.com, a woman named Anna Jarvis created the American version of the holiday in 1908, prompted by the passing of her own mother. It became an official holiday in 1914. Jarvis later denounced the commercialization of the holiday and tried to have it removed from the calendar!
Here are some fascinating facts about Mother’s Day:
The rules for using quotation marks can seem complicated, but once you understand the basic principles, it’s not so bad. But what do you do when you’ve got a quote within a quote?
In these social-media driven times, a company’s image depends increasingly on its words. From blog posts, tweets, and Facebook status updates, to good ol’ fashioned billboards, a brand’s ability to deliver error-free copy is key. While only a handful of people might notice a minor grammatical blunder in a corporate LinkedIn page, major errors undermine the brand’s credibility. After all, if a company can’t even spell correctly, why would consumers trust them to deliver a quality product?
You may not think about it much, but having a brain and using it requires a lot of energy.
Despite making up just 2 percent of the average adult’s body weight, the brain uses more than 20 percent of the body’s total energy. There’s no 80/20 rule at work here; the human brain is far and away the most energy-consumptive organ in the body.
And that’s not all.
According to brain studies, the amount of fuel needed for your brain is constant, meaning your brain is always hungry.
Have you ever noticed how, in the English language, some small words sometimes appear in a lot of bigger words? Take the word “friend,” for example. If you notice someone who is acting friendly toward you, you might want to start a friendship, so you befriend her. You don’t want to be friendless, after all, but you also probably don’t want to befriend unfriendly people, so you save your friendliness for those who really deserve it.
You are a writer. You enjoy what you do, and you do it well. So, what do you love most about writing? Could you pick one specific thing? Are we speaking of fiction, nonfiction or poetry? Essays maybe? Where does editing fit in here? Be careful, it quickly becomes a complicated question.
If we parse out all of the elements of writing, there are literally thousands of specific mechanics from which we could choose.
Business-speak. The fact that the jargon of the business world is often annoying is the least of its problems. If there’s one trait business writing needs to have, it’s clarity—which is the trait most business jargon phrases completely lack. They’re neither precise nor informative. They’re not even professional. They’re just vague, even though some of them sound awesome and trendy.
You only have to observe a dog rooting around in the trash can to realize that dogs don’t understand what could happen if they eat spoiled food. Humans, on the other hand, have the power of reason. Rotten meat is dangerous. They can imagine various possible consequences—a tummyache, a trip to the hospital, expensive prescriptions, and so on. Conditional sentences reflect humans’ capacity to hypothesize.
This poll is part of a series that Grammarly is running aimed at better understanding how the public feels about writing, language learning, and grammar.
Please take the poll and share your thoughts in the comments. We can’t wait to hear from you!
If you are interested in more, check out last week’s poll.
The terms former and latter are words used to distinguish between two things. Former directs us to the first of these two things, and latter directs us to the second (or last) of them. Do not use former or latter when you are writing about more than two things.
Former and latter are words that sound old-fashioned to some people, and indeed they are very old words.
According to the Online Etymological Dictionary, former derives from the Old English word forma, meaning “first.” By the 12th century, former was used to mean “first, earliest in time or order,” and by the 1580s, it arrived at its present meaning, “the first of two.”Latter has a similar history.
Summer has simmered down and school is back in session. What better way to keep the summer spirit alive a little bit longer than by encouraging you to pick up some of the top #summerreads from the Grammarly community?
In early September, we asked our Facebook, Google+, and Twitter communities which books they would most recommend from their summer reading lists. We simultaneously ran a survey to get more information about summer reading.
Possessive pronouns show that something belongs to someone. The possessive pronouns are my, our, your, his, her, its, and their. There’s also an “independent” form of each of these pronouns: mine, ours, yours, his, hers, its, and theirs. Possessive pronouns are never spelled with apostrophes.
Possessive pronouns simplify constructions that show possession of a noun.
In the murky territory of words you’ve heard people use but you’re not really sure whether you could call them words, ginormous takes up a lot of space.
Ginormous originated during the World War II as a slang word among British soldiers. Its first official appearance in written form was in the 1948 A Dictionary of Forces’ Slang, 1939-1945.
Romeo and Juliet, peanut butter and jelly. . . some combinations just seem to go together. Deadlines and exhaustion, on the other hand, are a pair that no one likes to experience. What do you do when you are confronted with that undesirable duo? Put up a fight with these seven motivating tactics.
If someone told you to do an online search for a blueprint for a house, you would skip off to your computer without a care in the world.
’Tis the season . . . to read! The holiday season means colder nights and more time inside for some, so why not spend it with your nose buried in a book?
We know the winter season can be tough for many people, with its short days and long nights. We also know bibiliotherapy is both real and wonderful. So, in the spirit of the holidays and bookishness, we’ve decided to create a new holiday focused on bibliophiles, bookworms, and jokesters of all sorts.
You think you’re locking in your career by never missing a day.
You’re not alone.
Research shows that more than a quarter of workers fear that taking time off will make them seem less dedicated. Others think that vacation-time martyrdom will boost their chances for a raise or a promotion (it doesn’t).
But, this (very American) cultural phenomenon of rarely taking time off and almost never using all of one’s vacation days is bad news for employers and employees alike.
Sick of unfocused, unproductive meetings? The average office meeting is a modern-day implement of torture, dragging on forever while everyone talks in circles and your annoying coworker (yeah, there’s one in every crowd) hijacks the meeting with his ramblings.
But it doesn’t have to be this way. A well-run meeting will last a bearable amount of time, get everyone aligned and on the same page, and develop clear next steps for what you’re trying to achieve together.
It’s often said that the whole isn’t necessarily the sum of its parts. That maxim applies when you turn “every day” into “everyday,” and it’s the same when you turn all together into altogether—you get something completely different.
All together refers to all the members of a group.
Conscience and conscious sound very similar and are often misused. For example, you might have heard someone say that they have something “on their conscious” when they actually mean “on their conscience.”
Conscience is a moral sense of right and wrong: My conscience is telling me that I must confess to the crime.
Conscious means aware, alert, or awake: I was conscious of a change in the weather.
You probably learned about “they” and other pronouns in the first grade. “They” is the third-person plural pronoun, used for talking about groups of things or people.
Merry LitMas!
Joy to the world, the bookish holiday has arrived! How will you celebrate?
We will be cracking the spines of a few of our favorite reads from this year (which, incidentally, make great last-minute gifts for that other holiday that rhymes with LitMas). We may curl up with a book and some tea, stretch out with cocoa and a sweater, or bring a book to a favorite literary haunt.
Are you procrastinating? Is there an essay or a blog post you just can’t seem to get done? We could suggest:
Don’t put off until tomorrow what can be done today.
Though, it won’t likely help.
Why not? Professionals, students, educators, writers, and so on have all heard this advice, and we all feel compelled to follow it, but—let’s be frank—it’s not easy to just “stop procrastinating.” We don’t procrastinate for the sake of procrastination or laziness.
The Grammarly team collected 500 active job postings, including marketing and engineering jobs, from the top 100 most profitable companies in the United States. We then assessed how each company used language in these listings to express hiring priorities.
via GIPHY
On the heels of our breakdown of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s writing habits, we’re serving up more writing wisdom from none other than the fabulous Tina Fey! The award-winning comedian-screenwriter-actress-producer-author has spent the past twenty years blazing trails as one of the great comic geniuses of our time.
And just in case you’ve been hiking the Amazon or watching only C-SPAN for the past twenty years, here’s a quick recap of her career . . .
How many times have you seen “Happy Holidays from the Jones’s” or “Mary Christmas” in a Christmas card?
When you’re working through a stack of Christmas cards, it can be difficult to cross your t’s and dot your i’s, let alone remember a series of seemingly random holiday-related grammar rules. So, in the spirit of holiday giving, we’re giving you eight Christmas grammar tips for LitMas.
You can say that a book is entitled “so and so,” but to say that it’s titled might be a more elegant and middle-of-the-road solution.
It doesn’t take a large leap of imagination to see how this blog might be read by someone who is working on his or her first book. To those of you who are working on novels, we wish the best of luck, offer some advice, and present you with a conundrum—will you title your book, or will you entitle it?
This poll is part of a series that Grammarly is running aimed at better understanding how the public feels about writing, language learning, and grammar.
Please take the poll and share your thoughts in the comments. We can’t wait to hear from you!
If you are interested in more, check out last week’s poll.
There are many perks to speaking the lingua franca of your time, but one of the downsides is that you’ll always doubt whether you’re using it right. English has almost as many variants as there are countries that use it as their official language. A great example of that is the past tense of the verb learn—is it learnt? Or is it learned?
Learnt and learned are both used as the past participle and past tense of the verb to learn.
Everyone knows you can’t get good at grammar without friendship. Children’s literature has some great models of friendship at its finest.
In growing-up order, here are five such examples of best friends through the ages.
“We will skip through the meadows and run through the woods and swim in the river. In the evenings we will sit right here on this front porch and count the stars.”
The stereotype of gamers as abysmal communicators is familiar.
It’s easy to picture an anti-social type sitting alone in his unkempt room with the blinds drawn, swilling energy drinks and grinding levels past dawn. Or worse yet, the kind who racks up kills online while wearing a headset and emitting a nonstop stream of cringeworthy recriminations. There is also that timeworn trope of the dungeon crawlers—those chortling weird-beards in the back room of the comic shop, forever rolling dice of peculiar geometries and blurting shrill inanities about critical fumbles: “This is preposterous!”
Tell a writer that he should avoid the passive voice in writing, and he’ll usually agree – although the passive voice is perfectly acceptable grammatically.
Most writers know that the sentence, “The cow jumped over the moon” is better than “The moon was jumped over by the cow.” However, if you check a few documents with Grammarly’s Add-in for Microsoft Office Suite, you’ll see that this ghost continues to haunt.
May 18 is International Museum Day. Some of the world’s greatest treasures and most valuable art are housed in museums, but you can also find smaller museums that cater to nearly every taste and interest. Here are five museums literature lovers might want to visit:
Located just down the street from the childhood home of Harper Lee, the author of the famous novel To Kill a Mockingbird, the Monroe County Museum is the home of the famous courtroom in which part of the novel was set.
Getting interrupted is no fun. Whether it’s at work or with a friend or family member, being the interruptee can make you feel disrespected and unheard. The good news: there are strategies for dealing with interrupters.
First, approach the situation differently based on the context and kind of interrupting. Here are some examples:
