Wednesday 25 November 2009

MLB Fans and Grammar: A Whole New Ball Game

As Major League Baseball gears up for the All-Star Game, Grammarly teamed up with The Wall Street Journal once again to see which team has the most grammatically correct fans. We looked at all 30 official MLB team sites and analyzed the top 150 comments for spelling, grammar, and punctuation errors. Each team had an average of over 10,000 words.

The Cleveland Indians hit a home run making the fewest mistakes (just 3.6 mistakes per 100 words) while the New York Mets strike out making 13.9 mistakes per 100 words.

Tuesday 24 November 2009

Here’s How to Get out of Meetings with Grace

I once worked remotely for a company that had a regular content editor meeting every Friday. That meeting was the bane of my working existence. We’d all gather on a conference call line starting at 10 a.m. We’d arrive with good intentions, but inevitably no one had an agenda and we’d walk away (sometimes hours later) without having reached any actionable conclusions.

Tuesday 17 November 2009

7 Writing Tips That Will Help You at Work

Let’s get the bad news over with first: no matter how much you write, it will probably never become the kind of mindlessly automatic task for which you’re fully free to zone out.

In other words, writing steadily for an afternoon will never be as meditative as a long drive down an empty highway. You have to keep filling the progress bar yourself. Seated at the keyboard, every moment a writer spends mentally compiling a grocery list or critiquing the coffee shop’s playlist is a moment that zero writing is done.

Tuesday 10 November 2009

Ax vs. Axe–What’s the Difference?

Ax and axe are different spellings of the same word. There is no difference in meaning or pronunciation. However, you might be surprised by all the possible meanings these two spellings share. The Merriam-Webster lists three primary definitions besides the cutting tool. Axe also refers to a hammer with a sharp edge for dressing or spalling stone. Musical instruments, such as guitars and saxophones, are also axes.

Tuesday 3 November 2009

Minuscule or Miniscule?

  • Minuscule means very small.
  • Miniscule is a newer spelling, probably derived from the prefix mini-.
  • Many feel that miniscule is a misspelling, but it occurs so frequently that it appears as a variant spelling in some dictionaries.

When talking about things that are small, people use the word mini. For example, a small, short skirt is a miniskirt. A minirecession is a recession with a lesser impact than a full recession.

50 Awesome Holiday Words to Know This December

The holidays are upon us, and these winter celebrations with their many traditions each have a rich and varied vocabulary. ...