Once, in a time before nearly everyone had access to the Internet in the palms of their hands, it was common to begin business correspondence with the salutation To Whom It May Concern. But times have changed.
We’ll take a look at whether you should use To Whom It May Concern, explore a few alternatives, and talk about the only type of correspondence where this greeting is still acceptable.
Job interviews are hard.
The anticipation and anxiety about doing well or messing up can be worse than a first date with a crush.
In our society, we place a lot of importance on job interview performance, which is why it can be surprising to see just how little many people know about interview questions and basic interview etiquette.
To help you understand whether you’re on track, we put together a simple quiz that will test your understanding of good interview habits.
English uses the definite article, the, in front of some geographical names but not in front of others.
Typically, the article the is not used before the names of countries and territories:
However, the is used before countries whose names are plural in form:
Compound words, like anytime and any time, sometimes don’t have the same meaning as the individual words they comprise. It’s a case of the whole being different from the sum of its parts. Everyday and every day are like that—everyday (with no space) doesn’t mean the same thing as every day (with a space).
Broadly speaking, an idiom is a widely used phrase that, when taken as a whole, has a particular meaning that you would not be able to deduce from the meanings of the individual words. The ubiquitous greeting “How are you doing today?” is an example of an idiom. Normally, how means “in what manner” or “to what degree.” Taken literally, the question doesn’t make a lot of sense.
A hyphen (-) is a punctuation mark that’s used to join words or parts of words. It’s not interchangeable with other types of dashes.
A dash is longer than a hyphen and is commonly used to indicate a range or a pause. The most common types of dashes are the en dash (–) and the em dash (—).
Some compound words, such as self-restraint are hyphenated. Numbers between twenty-five and ninety-nine should also be hyphenated when they’re spelled out.
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.
