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.
