Guest post from Brent Calderwood
Writing is like painting. You have to know the rules before you can start experimenting with them. Think about it: Picasso had to paint a lot of pictures of horses with four legs before he started putting noses on people’s foreheads. It’s the same way with words. Good authors are playful and innovative with the English language, but they had to learn the basics first.
Dear Prospective Dates,
We need to talk. After a string of meh encounters, it’s time to clear the air: I’m a lady introvert*, and the way you’ve been going about courtship just isn’t working. As an introvert, I need a much lower level of mental stimulation to operate than ambiverts or extroverts require. Though everyone is different, you should know that we introverts don’t like “typical” dating approaches.
Imagine, for a minute, that you’re an employer. You need to fill a position and you receive hundreds of applications every day. You’ve deleted the ones from senders like cutie143@email.com, the ones with misspellings in the subject line or email body, and the ones that sound like generic templates.
Then you read a cover letter that shows knowledge of the position, skill fit, proper grammar and spelling, and enthusiasm.
A lot, alot, and allot only differ by a few spaces or letters. However, all of the terms function differently. Let’s investigate how to use each one.
Alot is a common misspelling of a lot. A lot should always be spelled as two words. The meaning of a lot depends on the context. Usually, it means “many” or “to a great extent.” Let’s look at some examples.
Even though email takes up well over a quarter of the average working person’s day, many people still don’t have a knack for email etiquette. Often, the issue lies in separating personal email preferences from professional communication policies. Follow these tips for maintaining email etiquette at work, and you’ll develop a more effective communication strategy in no time.
A subordinate clause is a clause that cannot stand alone as a complete sentence; it merely complements a sentence’s main clause, thereby adding to the whole unit of meaning. Because a subordinate clause is dependent upon a main clause to be meaningful, it is also referred to as a dependent clause.
Whether you use the term subordinate or dependent to describe the clause, this clause’s function is clear: it provides informational support to the main event of the sentence.
In American English, program is the correct spelling. In Australian English, program and programme are both acceptable. In British English, programme is the prefered spelling, although program is often used in computing contexts.
Decades ago, program appeared in American and British writing. In the nineteenth century, the Brits started to favor the French way of spelling it—programme.
April 14 is National Library Workers’ Day. Given the literary nature of library work, it’s not surprising that some of our favorite authors were also librarians. Here’s a short list of writers who put in time between the stacks.
Lewis Carroll Before he began writing Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Lewis Carroll (whose real name was Charles Dodgson) worked as a librarian in England.
It’s practically magic how much work can be accomplished by email, especially for us mere muggles! If emails were sent by owl, our skies would be darkened day after day. Fortunately for our view and keeping the streets clean, you just need internet access. Everyone has a different approach to managing their email mischief. Take our fun quiz to find out what kind of email patronus you have.
Do you have trouble remembering when to use accept and when to use except? Learn how these two words differ and how they function.
Accept is a verb. Accept means to agree or to take something offered.
By Laura Wallis for The Stir by CafeMom
When I was a kid my family moved a few times. Once, I had just started the third grade, and my class was beginning the cursive writing unit. When I arrived at my new school, that lesson was already done. So I was left to teach the skill to myself, by following the letter charts above the blackboard.
To this day, my handwriting is atrocious.
Every office has its own sort of language—vocabulary that people frequently use when they’re at work but probably wouldn’t use that often otherwise. We’re used to office jargon, but we’d like to take a minute to review some of the business-y words that do the job while kind of driving us crazy at the same time. Jargon varies from office to office, but here are five of the words and phrases that make us cringe.
by Laura K. Lawless, writer at eLearnEnglishLanguage.com
Everyone makes mistakes when writing, sometimes due to simple typos, and other times because they just don’t know any better. Most people can spot their own typos when proofreading, but that only works when you know that it’s a mistake—what about when you don’t? Even native speakers mix up words that either look similar or have similar meanings, but there are simple techniques that can help you avoid some of these common mistakes.
Five hundred years ago, gentlemen used specialized vocabulary when referring to groups of animals. Most of the group names came from The Book of St. Albans, published in 1486. Their etymologies have been lost over the years, but why not have a guess?
Around the eighteenth century, some French farmers called côtiers banded together to work feudal lands.
If you have ever taken a writing or literature class, you probably heard someone refer to a protagonist.
Guest post by Rosevita Warda
“The status of English as an international language is long established and, for the foreseeable future, unlikely to be greatly challenged. However, I believe that to make it genuinely international, then one step in that direction could be to consider the influence of non-native speakers in a different light.
“Generally, their non-occurrent uses are labeled errors and they are encouraged to change to conform to the standard English model, even though many native speakers don’t.
You are battling toward the nexus in a 5v5-ranked game late on a Wednesday night. You have to work the next day and know you are not going to get enough sleep. But fear not! Your dedication to League of Legends is helping more than just your online rep. It’s helping you to be a better team player by teaching you these five valuable lessons in communicating under pressure.
Amateur Something or someone that is amateur is non-professional. If you remember that amateur ends in a fancy French suffix (-eur), you’ll be able to spell this word correctly in both professional and non-professional situations.
Conscientious Conscientious means thorough, careful, or vigilant. If you have a strong conscience, you will be conscientious. You can remember the conscience by breaking it into “con” and “science.” Then the similarities between conscience and conscientious will help you remember the spelling for the latter.
Happy St. Patrick’s Day! While you’re drinking green beer and counting shamrock leaves, you might end up debating a popular St. Patrick’s Day question: is it St. Patty’s Day or St. Paddy’s Day?
It’s easy to think that Patrick ought to be shortened to “Patty.” The name contains a T rather than a D, after all. However, “Paddy” comes from the Irish name Padraig, which is the reason St.
