On April 7, 2015 Grammarly partnered with Niche.com to launch the Grammarly $1000 Scholarship Giveaway. We know how difficult finding money for college can be which is why, this time around, we did away with the essay requirements — college is tough enough without the added stress of explaining why you need money to continue your studies. We get it.
Over 10,000 students entered our scholarship giveaway, and we’re pleased to announce that Miranda Fichter is our lucky winner.
Are you procrastinating? Is there an essay or a blog post you just can’t seem to get done? We could suggest:
Don’t put off until tomorrow what can be done today.
Though, it won’t likely help.
Why not? Professionals, students, educators, writers, and so on have all heard this advice, and we all feel compelled to follow it, but—let’s be frank—it’s not easy to just “stop procrastinating.” We don’t procrastinate for the sake of procrastination or laziness.
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!
Watching too much TV is bad for your health. According to some sources, being a couch potato will make you less smart. It will consume your time, influence your social relationships, affect your physical health in a very bad way, affect your emotional well-being, and skew your worldview. And the list goes on.
But this isn’t an article about the perils of TV watching.
It was a Sunday evening, the 28th of December in the year 1879. A dire storm was hitting Scotland hard—in Glasgow, the wind speed was measured at 71 mph. In Dundee, the wind was pummeling the bridge over the Firth of Tay, the Tay Rail Bridge, blowing at a speed of 80 mph and at a right angle. The wind, along with questionable design and craftsmanship of the bridge, was blamed when the the bridge collapsed that night, taking with it a train that was passing over it and the lives of everyone aboard.
Rules are rules, and they exist for a reason. They create order and minimize uncertainty. They are necessary because nothing would work without them. But some people don’t seem to understand that.
They don’t understand why it’s bad to split your infinitives, or why you shouldn’t start a sentence with a conjunction, or why you can’t end it with a preposition. Some people just don’t care.
Comradery is easy to find among the members of a winning team. Victorious teammates might high-five each other and recount the highlights of the game. Success creates a bond for the players that often continues off the court.
You know what feels great? Getting your holiday shopping done and out of the way early. One way to accomplish that is by keeping your game plan simple. Need a present for Aunt Trish? Book. For your brother-in-law? Book. For a special someone who just might be the one? Two books! Read on to find Grammarly’s hand-picked recommendations for everyone on your list:
Lafayette in the Somewhat United States, Sarah Vowell Sarah Vowell, widely adored for her ability to make nearly any moment in history at once fascinating, hilarious, and startlingly relevant to the world of today, offers yet another gem: an insightful and unconventional account of George Washington’s trusted officer and friend, that swashbuckling teenage French aristocrat, the Marquis de Lafayette.
With few exceptions, a comma should not separate a subject from its verb.
Writers are often tempted to insert a comma between a subject and verb this way because speakers sometimes pause at that point in a sentence. But in writing, the comma only makes the sentence seem stilted.
This Monday, April 13, is Scrabble Day, and Grammarly is celebrating with our fellow word-lovers, Dictionary.com!
Guest post by Michele Turner, CEO at Dictionary.com
Can you play a Q without a U in Scrabble? Whether you’re playing Scrabble, Words With Friends, or any other fun word game, here is a list of nine high-scoring solutions for the “Q conundrum,” so that you can make winning words with the letter Q — without its traditional letter companion, the U.
When you’re in a hurry, you might write “it’s” when you really mean “its,” or the other way around. You need to be aware of this mistake and know when to use which.
It’s is a contraction of “it is” or “it has.” Its is a possessive determiner we use to say that something belongs to or refers to something.
It’s and its are among the most commonly confused words. They are pronounced the same, there’s a very small difference in how they’re written, and it’s also easy to mistake the contraction in it’s for a possessive.
When I was new to the job market and mailing out resumes (although I’m dating myself, I’ll admit that this was well before the days of email), I sent my carefully crafted cover letters with a note that read:
Enclosed please find my resume.
One such mailing resulted in an interview. There I was in the wood-paneled office of an immaculately groomed lawyer. While I waited anxiously in an oversized leather wingback chair, he sat at his desk clicking his pen top and scanning my resume and cover letter.
The past perfect continuous tense (also known as the past perfect progressive tense) shows that an action that started in the past continued up until another time in the past. The past perfect continuous tense is constructed using had been + the verb’s present participle (root + -ing).
Unlike the present perfect continuous, which indicates an action that began in the past and continued up to the present, the past perfect continuous is a verb tense that indicates something that began in the past, continued in the past, and also ended at a defined point in the past.
Everyone knows you can’t get good at grammar without friendship. Children’s literature has some great models of friendship at its finest.
In growing-up order, here are five such examples of best friends through the ages.
“We will skip through the meadows and run through the woods and swim in the river. In the evenings we will sit right here on this front porch and count the stars.”
On Twitter, we let our wit loose into the world. On Facebook, we showcase our social selves. On dating websites, we focus on our romantic side. And on LinkedIn, we carefully construct an image we wouldn’t mind an employer seeing—no photos from parties, no funny cat videos, no wisecracks. After all, it’s the professional social network, and using it means we consent to the general notion that it should be used for serious pursuits.
Places with strict and unforgiving rules make great settings for spooky stories. Think about all the books and movies set against the backdrop of a strict school, a rigid convent, or an oppressive family home. The unyielding rules contribute to an atmosphere that invites creepiness. The same is true for grammar—when rules are enforced arbitrarily, sometimes horror ensues.
Whether you’re a diehard Star Wars fan or you’re still a newbie, chances are you know Yoda speak when you hear it. The Jedi master’s method of speaking includes quirky sentence structures, unusual words, and wise phrases. Read on for some theories of Yoda-speak and a guide to talking like Yoda on your own.
If you’ve ever thought that Yoda’s way of speaking sounds almost primeval, you’re not far off.
Whether you write novels, blogs, marketing content, news articles, movies, social media posts, transcripts for podcasts, or something that we don’t even know about yet, you probably sometimes feel the need for inspiration. Maybe you could use some tips on reaching a wider audience. If you work freelance, maybe you’re in search of some ideas for expanding your business.
Writing is like falling in love. Those who really succeed at the endeavor are those who are willing to put their hearts out there and risk being rejected. As you can imagine, this can be a wonderful experience–or it can be agonizing. At least for adults.
For children, falling in love with writing is less dramatic. It’s about learning to tell their stories and committing to paper all of the make-believe worlds they have created.
Mondays induce negativity like no other day. After all, weekends are straight-up awesome. If we’re lucky, we get to sleep in, enjoy a breakfast that’s not rushed, and maybe savor a cup of coffee while laughing at YouTube videos of dogs failing at being dogs. Sometimes, we have exciting activities planned. Sometimes we get to enjoy leisure time. And sure, sometimes we work.
There are four elements of the zodiac—air, fire, water, and earth. The zodiac signs within each element share characteristics. Take this fun quiz to find out which zodiac element your writing style is like and see if it matches your real zodiac sign!
Did we get it right? Share your thoughts in the comments.
With the revelation of Melania Trump’s alleged plagiarism of a 2008 Michelle Obama speech, plagiarism is suddenly front-page news. Although this may be the most talked-about instance of plagiarism at the moment, it’s far from the first. Plagiarism has existed as long as intellectual property has, and there have been numerous public figures accused of this academic transgression, including the United States’ current president and vice president.
People read for a variety of reasons: entertainment, knowledge, understanding. There’s no better way to gain a larger vocabulary than by reading novels of all types and genres. Your high school teachers might have considered the classics the only true literature with educational value, but there are plenty of modern tales that can help you pick up new words to fling around at cocktail parties.
A collective noun is a word or phrase that refers to a group of people or things as one entity. One common error that arises from using collective nouns is subject-verb disagreement: writers often become confused about whether to treat a collective noun as singular or plural. While collective nouns are mostly treated as singular, there are exceptions.
Collective nouns represent more than one person or thing in a class.
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.
Sentences may contain many different types of clauses. Defining clauses, also called restrictive clauses, serve an important function. What role do they play in sentences and how does it relate to the name of these clauses?
First, let’s lay some groundwork. A subject, verb, and a relative pronoun (who, whose, where, when, which, or that) distinguish relative clauses from other types of clauses, though not all three are needed.
If you find yourself debating whether to use “was” or “were” in a sentence, it’s likely that you’re dealing with an unreal conditional sentence. As a refresher, an unreal conditional sentence expresses events that are hypothetical or improbable.
Typically, an unreal conditional sentence begins with an if clause containing the past tense or past perfect tense of a verb followed by a conditional clause containing a modal verb such as “would.” Consider the following sentences:
When spoken aloud, would of and its fellows should of and could of sound exactly like would’ve, could’ve and should’ve. But even if no one can tell the difference when you’re speaking, the mistake becomes obvious as soon as you write it down.
When people write would of, should of, could of, will of or might of, they are usually confusing the verb have with the preposition of.
“It’s not how much we give,” said Mother Teresa, “but how much love we put into giving.” This statement is liberating and beautiful, but it sets a high standard on Mother’s Day. Buying Mom a blouse at the mall might be convenient, but creating a heartfelt gift with your own hands means more.
Mother’s Day is May 10. Check out these five creative ways to help Mom understand just what she means on her special day.
In honor of National Poetry Month, writer Antonella Gazzardi has contributed a poem about grammar for your reading pleasure!
Every weekday in April, we will be sharing a poem, an excerpt of poetry, or a feature on a poet. Our celebration will feature poetry from every era, and we ask our friends to join us throughout the month by sharing their favorite poetry under the tag #PoetryMonth.
A young man named John Koenig was trying to write poems. However, some emotions seemed difficult to express in words. He had the idea of creating words for these previously unnamed feelings in a dictionary. Thus, The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows was born. He began a website and a web series on Youtube that introduced his words to the world. Now, people everywhere can contribute to the dictionary.
In the murky territory of words you’ve heard people use but you’re not really sure whether you could call them words, ginormous takes up a lot of space.
Ginormous originated during the World War II as a slang word among British soldiers. Its first official appearance in written form was in the 1948 A Dictionary of Forces’ Slang, 1939-1945.
I know it’s dirty and unconventional, but I liked to do it outside in college.
The first time was spring semester of my freshman year, and once I started I just couldn’t stop. Because I went school in Wisconsin, the passing of the seasons limited when I could indulge in the grassy common areas around campus — but when the weather was right I’d do it outdoors for hours. As a young, open-minded philosophy student, it didn’t take much to turn me on — to writing.
Whether it’s a to-do list that never seems to get done, a less-than-inspired morning routine, or a tendency to get distracted (damn you, social media!), we’ve all got a hole in our productivity armor somewhere. Every Monday, we’re going to be analyzing common bad habits that could be holding you back, and we’ll offer a hack or two to help you get more quality output from your time.
Every grammarian has a list of grammar pet peeves. We compile new lists every year. However, some errors are insidiously persistent. Like coffee stains on a snow-white rug, we cannot seem to scrub them away no matter how hard we try. But we must keep up the fight.
Join us as we again leap into the fray against our arch-nemesis: the most-common-glaring-grammar-errors-of-all-time.
Grammar is important, but it’s not a matter of life or death. Or is it? How does grammar influence the legal system? Researchers decided to find out by conducting an experiment. Does the wording of the description of a murder affect whether jurors classify a crime as first- or second-degree murder? According to their findings, “legal judgments can be affected by grammatical aspect but [most significantly] limited to temporal dynamics… In addition, findings demonstrate that the influence of grammatical aspect on situation model construction and evaluation is dependent upon the larger linguistic and semantic context.” In other words, grammar plays a part, but the study participants also paid attention to context when making their decisions.
There are two types of writers in this world: those who use too many commas and those who use too few. While unnecessary commas can turn straightforward sentences into twisting labyrinths of syntactical confusion, missing a critical comma can change the entire meaning of your sentence.
Consider the headline from the now-infamous Rachael Ray cover of Tails magazine: “Rachael Ray finds inspiration in cooking her family and her dog.” While the line breaks of the original cover make it apparent what the editors meant to say, the lack of commas between the three items in the list—“cooking,” “family,” and “her dog”—caused Tails to accidentally portray Ray as a cannibal who gleefully cooks her family and dog.
Do you enjoy team sports? Some team positions carry special responsibilities. In hockey, the goalie’s job is to block the other team from scoring. In American football, the place holder steadies the football for the field goal kicker. If you imagine language as a team sport, you can think of grammatical cases as team positions. They tell you the special roles of pronouns.
Whilst and while are two words with identical meanings—usually. But you can’t always use whilst instead of while.
Typically, Brits use whilst and Americans use while. That’s the main difference. When used as a conjunction or an adverb, while and whilst are interchangeable:
The present perfect continuous tense (also known as the present perfect progressive tense) shows that something started in the past and is continuing at the present time. The present perfect continuous is formed using the construction has/have been + the present participle (root + -ing).
In this sentence, using the present perfect continuous verb tense conveys that reading War and Peace is an activity that began sometime in the past and is not yet finished in the present (which is understandable in this case, given the length of Tolstoy’s weighty tome).
Welcome back to the Not-So-Sweet 16! Today, we have two powerhouse email competitors that vie for the enviable title of “most annoying email habit.” Which do you think is worse, sneaky CCs or mass forwards?
Boss CC Sneak Attack:
Occasionally, there is a reason to CC your manager on an email about a project or issue you’re working on. This is not one of those times. The “sneak attack” occurs when someone adds your boss to a thread in order to intimidate you or encourage a specific outcome.
Pronouns need antecedents. That means that the thing (or person, or place) that the pronoun refers to needs to have been mentioned already by name somewhere earlier in the sentence or paragraph. If it’s not clear which thing the pronoun refers to, the reader can get quite confused.
Learn more about pronoun-antecedent agreement.
To learn more about grammar and to help us celebrate National Grammar Day this March, visit our new resource page.
In most cases, the subjunctive form of a verb is usually the third-person form of the verb with the ‑s dropped, but the verb to be is a special case. The subjunctive is used after certain expressions that contain an order or a request, a hypothetical, or a wish.
Here’s an example of the subjunctive mood in action:
Tell a writer that he should avoid the passive voice in writing, and he’ll usually agree – although the passive voice is perfectly acceptable grammatically.
Most writers know that the sentence, “The cow jumped over the moon” is better than “The moon was jumped over by the cow.” However, if you check a few documents with Grammarly’s Add-in for Microsoft Office Suite, you’ll see that this ghost continues to haunt.
According to an oft-quoted 2002 article from The New York Times, 81 percent of Americans believe they have a book in them – and that they should write it.
In November, 41,940 participants in National Novel Writing Month did just that when they successfully wrote 50,000 words in 30 days. At the same time, because not all novelists-to-be have the time to write a solo-book, the Grammarly team organized a group of authors to collaborate on one novel.
Offense is spelled differently based on where you, or your audience, are. But neither offense nor offence are wrong.
In one sense, offense means an attack.
Isn’t the imagination a wonderful thing? In English, the subjunctive mood expresses hypothetical and conditional expressions. Let’s explore.
Most of the time, the subjunctive mood of a verb looks exactly like the indicative form. The only way to know the difference between the two is by the context of the sentence. However, you can recognize third person singular verbs in the subjunctive mood because there is no S on the end of the them.
Some of the greatest works of literature contain beautifully written declarations of love. But if you want to learn the rules of grammar, don’t look to these novels for help. Here are some of the most romantic quotes from literature and explanations of the grammar rules they bend and break.
Tender is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald ‘To-night’ is possibly confused with the correctly spelled word, ‘tonight.’ In the past, this hyphenated spelling of ‘tonight’ was common, but it’s best to use the modern spelling in your writing to keep the meaning clear.
To hear some people tell it, one of the great hallmarks of the holiday season is singing carols–think Jingle Bell Rock, Silent Night, and Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer. But interestingly, many carolers don’t actually stop to consider the words of these popular holiday songs.
Commonly misunderstood song lyrics can be hilarious or downright confusing–so as word nerds, the Grammarly team decided to take a closer look.
A day for fools? People around the world, and especially in North America and Europe, celebrate April 1 by playing practical jokes and trying to convince each other of outlandish false stories. But how did these customs evolve and why on the first day of April?
To answer that, we have to journey back in time to the reign of Constantine, a Roman emperor in the fourth century.
meaning against (especially in sports and legal use); as opposed to, in contrast to. (Often abbreviated as vs.) For example:
meaning a kind of writing arranged with a metrical rhythm, typically having a rhyme; small sections of the Jewish or Christian Bible; several similar units of a song.
The past perfect, also called the pluperfect, is a verb tense used to talk about actions that were completed before some point in the past.
The past perfect tense is for talking about something that happened before something else.
Have you ever memorized the chorus of a song? You may sing a few lines over and over, but you can’t remember what comes after the section you know. Many people recite the mnemonic “I before E, except after C.” They either don’t remember or never learned the rest of the rhyme. Here are two additional lines that reveal some exceptions to the spelling rule:
An imposter is a fraud, someone who pretends to be something they aren’t. Often, their motive is to steal or take advantage of others. However, some people who feel like imposters aren’t guilty of any crime. They haven’t intentionally misled anyone.
According to psychologists Pauline Rose Clance and Suzanne Imes, imposter syndrome affects many high-achieving individuals.
Commas may be placed after the closing parenthesis but not before either the opening or the closing parenthesis. If the sentence would not require any commas if the parentheses were removed, the sentence should not have any commas when the parentheses are present.
You’ve likely seen writers use parentheses to set apart information from the main sentence. But do you know how to use them correctly?
Your dream job is out there.
You can and will find it soon. How do we know this? Because you are driven, focused and have come to the right place for job-seeking advice. Grammarly is here to help.
Don’t be mistaken. Finding an ideal career path isn’t easy. Job interviews are tough. Plus, figuring out your perfect fit can be challenging. All of this is what makes the job-search process something most people dread.
How the Grammar Girl Team Answers All Those Grammar Questions
Guest post by Ashley Dodge
English is a complex, complicated, and often confusing language. It seems as if everyone, at one time or another, needs help with grammar. As Grammar Girl’s assistant, I’m lucky enough to help people find the answers to their grammar questions sent in by e-mail, whether it’s how to remember “affect” or “effect,” or how to use the semicolon.
The British Empire hasn’t been in existence for almost three-quarters of a century. At the peak of its might, it covered close to a quarter of the world’s land area and ruled a fifth of its population. But the empire changed, transformed, and passed as all things pass. When the territories Britain had conquered gained freedom, there was one thing that remained as evidence of how grand the empire once was—the English language.
Today, the Grammarly team officially announced the availability of its Grammarly® Add-in for Microsoft® Office Suite. The add-in combines the power of Grammarly’s automated proofreading technology with Microsoft® Office Word™ and Microsoft® Office Outlook®.
In addition to checking for more than 250 common grammar errors and enhancing vocabulary usage, the Grammarly add-in offers unique features such as citation suggestions.
Does your writing feel cluttered?
Over winter, you fell into the habit of drafting dense paragraphs that feel stuffy and humid, like a cramped apartment with a wheezing, determined radiator. Or your structure fell into madness, like a closet seething with mysterious solvents, loathsome sporting gear, and drawers of mismatched screws.
Now’s the time to dust off your style, haul out the verbiage, and ready your next project for sunshine and daffodils.
Whether you work in a busy office or a busy home, there’s plenty to distract you. Besides preventing you from getting things done, distractions can negatively impact your work relationships. For example, careless errors and forgotten appointments can damage your reputation in the eyes of your clients and colleagues. Don’t let it happen to you! Let’s identify strategies to fight thirteen common work distractions.
Some people let poetry intimidate them because they get the idea that poetry is all about rhyming, iambic pentameter, and obscure language. While it is true that some of the most beautiful poems are also difficult to understand, poetry in general isn’t that tough. By following some simple guidelines, you can pen verses that are poignant, pure, and easy on the ears.
