65 Powerful Words to Take Your Resume to the Next Level

Do you consider yourself a hard worker? A team player? A people person? Whatever you do, don’t tell that to the person reading your resume. Why not? Because if they hear about one more of those, they’re going to tear the resume into itty-bitty shreds.

As good as certain terms might seem, they’ve been on a few billion too many resumes to mean anything to potential bosses. When you’re updating your resume, make your accomplishments stand out by using words that are powerful and descriptive rather than stale and clichéd.

8 New Movies and Shows That Creatives Must Watch

Creative work can be especially fun and rewarding, but after a long day of writing, designing, composing, crafting, coding, building, imagining . . . it’s good to relax and recharge.

And what better way to kick back than with a movie or show that refuels your creative energy?

We’ve entered a golden age in US television, where creators are forging into new territory and bringing diverse ideas and voices to the forefront.

How Reading Affects Your Brain

As you read these words, your brain is decoding a series of abstract symbols and synthesizing the results into complex ideas. It’s an amazing process. The English writer Katie Oldham described the “surreal” act of reading a book this way: “You stare at marked slices of tree for hours on end, hallucinating vividly.”

And as if it weren’t already strange enough, consider this: If you do enough of it—that is, read a lot—it may not only rewire parts of your brain, but perhaps even make you a nicer person. (Maybe.

Talk Like a Copy Editor and Learn Something New in the Process

If a publisher offers you a kill fee, don’t panic! They’re not asking you to murder anyone. A kill fee is money paid for a piece of writing if they decide to kill it—i.e., not publish it. If you want to make it in the writing industry (and avoid criminal charges), you need to learn the lingo. Let’s start right now.

Basic Writing Jargon

Have you heard of a policeman’s beat? It’s the area he regularly patrols.

Commas After Introductory Phrases

What Is an Introductory Phrase?

An introductory phrase is like a clause, but it doesn’t have its own subject and verb; it relies on the subject and verb in the main clause. It sets the stage for the main part of the sentence. When you use an introductory phrase in your writing, you’re signaling to the reader that the central message of the sentence is yet to come.

Introductory clause: After the meeting was over, the staff was exhausted.

5 Things to Avoid When Writing a Letter of Recommendation

So, you’ve been asked to write a letter of recommendation.

Aside from the immediate awkwardness of having to articulate how we think and feel about another person’s work, figuring out how to write a letter of recommendation often induces anxiety that a poorly written letter will weaken your contact’s chance at success.

Whether you are writing a letter for an employee, co-worker, or student, there are some essential Do’s and Don’ts for how to write an effective letter of recommendation.

Empathy vs. Sympathy

• Empathy is a term we use for the ability to understand other people’s feelings as if we were having them ourselves.
• Empathy can also mean projecting our own feeling onto a work of art or another object.
• Sympathy refers to the ability to take part in someone else’s feelings, mostly by feeling sorrowful about their misfortune.
• Sympathy can also be used in relation to opinions and taste, like when you say that you have sympathy for a political cause.