Remember when phones were used exclusively for making phone calls? (Hard to believe, right?) Now we use our smartphones for all sorts of fun things . . . like sending text messages, answering emails, posting on Facebook, commenting on our favorite cat videos, and even finding true love.
While the freedom and flexibility of using a mobile device is awesome—the frustration that comes from typing on a tiny touch screen is not so great.
Wouldn’t it be great if there were a magic word you could say in order to get people to agree with you? If, for example, a simple utterance of “abracadabra” could instantly convince your employer to see things your way, salary negotiations would be a whole lot easier.
Unfortunately, we live in the real world, and those magic words that guarantee instant success don’t quite exist — but the good news is, we’ve got the next best thing.
Affect and effect are easy to mix up. Here’s the short version of how to use affect vs. effect. Affect is usually a verb, and it means to impact or change. Effect is usually a noun, an effect is the result of a change. Watch out! There are certain situations and fixed phrases that break the general usage rules for these words.
Now that the basics are out of the way, the time has come to learn the intricacies of how to use affect and effect effectively.
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.
Getting feedback in the workplace can be a difficult experience. We each crave success, aspiring for praise from our leaders and peers that will, in turn, make us feel recognized and valuable at work. In reality, constructive criticism will be doled out more often and will play a more significant role in the dynamics of our relationships with co-workers and in our individual performance.
As grammar nerds, we care a lot about correct grammar, spelling, and punctuation. If you’re a grammar lover, maybe you’ve found yourself fighting the urge to correct a misspelled menu item at a restaurant. Perhaps you’ve even corrected a “who” to a “whom” when your friend used the wrong word in a story.
When it comes to grammar correction and education, where is the line between agitating and helping?
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.
How many emails do you send per day? With over 200 billion emails going out every single day, there’s a good chance at least a couple of them are coming from you. But if you’re not structuring your emails properly, you may be making both your and your recipient’s lives more difficult than they need to be.
Whether you’re asking for customer support, planning a party, or sending a work email, the following tips will help you craft efficient and effective emails that actually get things done.
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.
I just wrote this sentence three times—twice to change the direction of my opening monologue, and once to fix some structural errors. I did all that picking and all those rewrites before I even wrote another sentence. It took me about five minutes.
Why did I fiddle so long with one sentence? I have a hard time getting my internal editor to quiet down, so I developed the habit of self-editing as I write.
The Grammarly team is growing quickly, which means that we’re writing a lot of job descriptions to help us recruit top talent. One recent job post stated: “Salary will be commensurate with experience.”
Commensurate . . . commensurate . . . commensurate . . .
Perhaps you know what that word means; you may even understand how to use it in the context of a sentence. However, if you are like me, you have no idea how to actually say it aloud.
We’ve all heard the bad grammar horror stories: gory rumors of a brilliant job candidate missing out on an opportunity because of a misplaced comma or frighteningly funny-not-funny tales of a political candidate mangling a perfectly good one-liner (making it mean even less than it did originally).
Then, of course, there’s the seemingly never-ending barrage of listicles recounting the 10 Most Hilarious Grammar Mistakes You Have To See Before You Die or waxing lyrical about #Grammarfails That Only Grammar Lovers Will Understand.
You don’t have to be a bachelor to get a bachelor’s degree, but you do need to demonstrate mastery to get a master’s degree.
