9 Perfect Ways to Improve Your Proofreading Skills

We all know that proofreading is important—it doesn’t matter if you’re a native speaker or just learning English. Nothing is worse than turning in a project you worked hard on, only to discover that it’s full of typos, misspellings, and grammatical mistakes. But proofreading your own writing is tough. Sometimes your brain sees what you meant to write instead of what’s actually on the page.

16 Original Pun-inspired Costumes to Wear This Halloween

To anyone who’s been following us on social media, it should come as no surprise that Grammarly loves puns—especially clever ones that we’ve never seen before. With Halloween just around the corner, we thought we would pull together some of the most creative ideas to spark your imagination.

1Drawn and Quartered

It’s a good thing puns aren’t considered treason! Follow this helpful tutorial to cover yourself in Pop Art makeup, then draw or hot-glue quarters to an old T-shirt.

Comma After Introductory Clauses

Introductory clauses are dependent clauses that are often found at the beginning of the sentence (although they can be moved to the end of the sentence, too, without confusing the meaning of the sentence). After a dependent introductory clause, we use a comma to separate the introductory clause from the independent clause. Consider the examples below:

As the man was walking into the store he came face to face with his childhood sweetheart.

Creative People Will Want to Know These 4 Tips from JJ Abrams

If you’re a fan of film, television, or lens flare, you’ve probably heard of JJ Abrams. He’s the Emmy award–winning writer-director-producer who brought us Alias, Felicity, Lost, Super 8, Mission Impossible III, Cloverfield, and 10 Cloverfield Lane.

Oh yeah . . . and he rebooted two of the greatest sci-fi franchises of all time, Star Trek and Star Wars. No big deal, y’all!

If you’re ready to make your own creative mark on the world, listen up—JJ’s got some advice for you.

20 Email Subject Lines That Will Get Opened Every Time

Did you know that 33 percent of email recipients decide whether or not to open an email based on subject line alone? If you want your email read, you’ve got to get it opened first. Here are twenty powerful headers to try for four different types of email outreach, plus a few helpful tips for creating subject lines that work.

Networking

Met you at [event]. Let’s connect!

If you’ve met your contact before, and you’re convinced they’d remember the meeting favorably, it’s always helpful to bring it up

How British English and American English are Different

Many Americans who love tea would turn up their noses at the idea of adding milk to it. Brits, on the other hand, are known for lacing their strong tea with milk. With or without milk, tea is tea. It’s served one way in Britain and another way in the United States, but everyone can recognize it for what it is. The language that Americans and Brits share is a bit like that—spoken differently in the two locations, but understandable by both groups of speakers.

Rules for Comma Usage

Ah, the comma. Of all the punctuation marks in English, this one is perhaps the most abused and misused. And it’s no wonder. There are lots of rules about comma usage, and often the factors that determine whether you should use one are quite subtle. But fear not! Below, you’ll find guidance for the trickiest comma questions.

What Is a Comma?

While a period ends a sentence, a comma indicates a smaller break.