31 Words and Phrases You No Longer Need

Close your eyes. Imagine words as people in an office setting. The verbs scurry about, active and animated, getting things done. The adjectives and adverbs conjure ideas and images in the marketing department. But there’s always that one guy. See him? He’s over by the water cooler, leaning against the wall. He’s omnipresent, and yet nobody really knows what he does. He may be hanging around, but he sure doesn’t seem to be pulling his weight.

8 More Wondrous Winter Idioms

Feeling under the weather? Walking on thin ice with your vocabulary variety? These idioms will have a snowball effect on your language use this winter. And they’re just the tip of the iceberg.

Take a chill pill

If you’re going to tell someone to calm down, why not do it in rhyme? “Chill” means a feeling of coldness, as in, “there was a chill in the air.” Sometime in recent decades, probably the 1970s, the word also came to mean “relax”—just imagine a hippie flower child flashing a peace sign and saying “Chill out, dude.”

5 Best Writers’ Retreats of All Time

Some like it hot. Others like it cold, or cluttered, or colorful. As you can imagine, authors, poets, and playwrights find inspiration in a variety of writing environments. With Log Cabin Day coming up on June 28, the Grammarly team began thinking about the best — and most interesting — places to write.

Are you curious about where your favorite author penned his or her bestseller?

Words of Wisdom from Great Women Writers

In honor of International Women’s Day, we rounded up nine of our favorite quotes from women writers about reading. Share your favorite quotes about reading and writing in the comments section!

“Which Celebrity Writer Is Just Like You?” Quiz

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.

6 Ways to Celebrate National Teacher Day

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.

5 Memos That Went Terribly Wrong

In the world of digital communications, pretty much everyone can relate to an email experience going terribly wrong at work. Ever hit “reply all” and sprayed a private message to a group of co-workers and lived to regret it?

Writing internal business communications shouldn’t be fraught with peril, but for these unfortunate executives, things went terribly wrong. From the ridiculous to the tragic, take a look at these five truly terrible business memos.

3 Charles Dickens Characters You Don’t Want to Meet

The great English writer Charles Dickens is known for his well-crafted characters. While some of the characters we meet in Dickens’ novels are endearing heroes, others are sinister villains. Here are three Dickens characters you would never want to meet.

Bill Sikes in Oliver Twist A career criminal, violent abuser, and murderer, Bill Sikes is at the top of the list of characters to avoid.

5 Ways To Write Better Poems

Poetry is a strange medium. It’s both heavily critiqued and profoundly subjective. A poem can be as timeless as the best classical literature or it might only ever move one reader. When a format is so artistic and personal, it seems absurd to impose rules or suggest ways in which one poem is objectively better than another. Nonetheless, there are certain ways in which a poet can make her own work the best it can be, regardless of how it compares to the mainstream.

Five Tools Dyslexic People Can Use To Improve Their Writing

By Nelson Lauver, Author of Most Un-Likely To Succeed

I’m nervous and thinking about turning around and getting back in my car. Just ring the doorbell, I tell myself. I find the courage, and my blind date answers the door with one hand while holding back Lola, an exuberant 80-pound rescued pit bull mix, with the other. I can’t believe my eyes! Jane could be a model. She’s stunning, with a movie-star smile.