Traveling or Travelling?

How great is it to travel? To meet new people, see new places, experience different cultures, live life the way life is lived somewhere else. Plenty of good things are associated with travel, but there’s one particular issue that can make traveling annoying: the spelling. Travel is easy enough to spell and not at all confusing, but “traveling,” “traveler,” “traveled”?

Resume Objective: Valuable to Have or Thing of the Past?

The average recruiter spends about six seconds looking at your resume, and you’ve got to make every one of them count. Do resume objectives help or hurt you?

A resume objective is a short statement that outlines your career direction. Objective statements were once the standard on every job-seeker’s resume. A decade or so ago, you wouldn’t have sent out a resume without one.

The Dark Side of Mother Goose

Murder, torture, mass death by plague…not exactly the stuff of children’s literature, right? Actually, if you read the rhymes of Mother Goose, it is. Most people don’t realize the macabre history of these innocuous-sounding rhymes, but dig beneath the surface, and you’ll find Mother Goose poetry is chock-full of gruesome imagery.

In fact, many of today’s nursery rhymes are sanitized versions of the grim originals.

Writing in the Voice of Me

Guest post from Tilia Klebenov Jacobs 

“My book is about, um, me.  Is that okay?”

This is the question I get most often when I teach novel-writing classes.  And I say go for it, because every novelist is a memoirist and every memoirist is a novelist.  Even the most earnest nonfiction writer must of necessity apply a little fiction here and there, if only because she probably wasn’t taking notes on that watershed conversation thirty years ago.  By contrast, the novelist can create a completely fictional character, but as often as not writes about himself.  Far from being a cop-out, this can add richness to one’s prose.

Benefited or Benefitted—Which Is Right?

• Benefited and benefitted are both acceptable spellings.
• Benefited is more common in the United States.

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When you make a verb past tense, sometimes all you have to do is add -ed. Other times, you double the final consonant before adding it. What about the verb benefit? Is the past tense benefited or benefitted?

Benefited vs. Benefitted

The quick answer is that both of them are acceptable.

Is It Omelet or Omelette?

• Omelet is the spelling used in American English.
• Omelette is the spelling used in British English.

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An omelet (or omelette) is a type of egg dish, often served at breakfast or brunch. Neither spelling is wrong, but there are some guidelines for when to use which.

Omelet is the standard spelling in American English. In fact it appears about twice as often as omelette in American publications.

What are we grateful for? Commas.

With Thanksgiving just around the corner, the Grammarly team polled more than 1,700 Facebook fans on what piece of punctuation they are most “thankful” for in their writing.

The semi-colon, em-dash, and period, were top contenders; yet, overwhelmingly we learned that English writers are most thankful for the comma.

Although writers enjoy the comma, many do not know how to use it.

7 Awesome and Underused Scrabble Words

If a perfect game for competitive wordsmiths exists, Scrabble is it. Not only does the game allow you to flex your vocabulary muscles, it also encourages you to use key strategies to increase your score. When you play these seven underused words, you’ll have a winning chance at an all-time Scrabble high score.

Maximize 

One of the easiest ways to score big with Scrabble is to use one or more of the highest-ranked letter tiles.

Punctuation Standards in British English

There are certain punctuation standards in British English that are important for a writer to understand. Even the most insightful article might be dismissed by readers because of punctuation errors, even if they have nothing to do with the merit of the content. Some mistakes crop up time and time again, making them understandable, but all the harder to excuse. Consider these punctuation pitfalls in British English that often trap the unwary.

“Where do you do it?” Meme Generators

Do you want to help us spread awareness for writing, GrammoWriMo, and NaNoWriMo? Or maybe you just want to show some of your writer-pride? Either way, we’ve put together a special meme for you to customize with your own #IDoIt caption.

To create your own #IDoIt meme to share on Facebook, Twitter, your blog and other social media channels, follow the instructions below:

Quiz: What Kind of Imposter Syndrome Do You Have?

It’s irrelevant that you’ve been working in your field for years; you’re living in fear of being outed as a fraud. A fake. A phony.

It’s imposter syndrome.

Imposter syndrome is the inability to internalize your successes, coupled with the fear of being outed as an unqualified fraud.

This fear of being exposed as inadequate and unqualified literally keeps you from achieving your best professional self.

Mistaking a dangling participle, laughter was heard anyway.

If the title of this post doesn’t make any sense, it shouldn’t.

This is going somewhere, I promise! Bear with me.

Today, while scouring Tumblr and various forums for “The Best Picture on the Internet,” I came across the following:

I am certain that most people read to the last frame and, caught up in Johnny Carson’s joke, didn’t think twice about whether or not Dean Martin knew what a dangling participle is.

Separate vs. Seperate

Along with loose and definitely, separate is one of the most commonly misspelled words in the English language. Separate can be an adjective or a verb. As an adjective, it means set apart, distinct, or not related. As a verb, it means to to set apart, to distinguish, or to divide. Separate is often misspelled as seperate, a word that has no meaning and is simply a misspelling:

Top International Productivity Books

As a company striving to make people more productive and successful, we know a thing or two about the importance of having the right tools when there’s a job to be done. But even though Grammarly will help speed up your proofreading, you also need to know how to manage your time if you want to be more productive. That means prioritizing and fighting the urge to procrastinate.

What Is a Relative Pronoun and How Does It Work?

A relative pronoun is a word that introduces a dependent (or relative) clause and connects it to an independent clause. A clause beginning with a relative pronoun is poised to answer questions such as Which one? How many? or What kind? Who, whom, what, which, and that are all relative pronouns.

Relative clauses are also sometimes referred to as adjective clauses, because they identify or give us additional information about the subject of the independent clause they relate to.

Avoid the 7 Blogging Mistakes That Reduce Your Traffic

When you start blogging, you can almost smell success in terms of your marketing strategies. Blogging can be a powerful way to expand your audience, but if you do it wrong it can work the other way. Below are seven blogging mistakes you may not be aware you are committing.

Instability in blog posting

Be direct and make sure your message is clear.

People are intelligent and capable of determining what they believe and what they do not.

The Declaration of Independence: A Lesson in Language History

Language is constantly evolving – a fact made especially clear when we take a look at historical documents and note how writing norms have shifted over the years. The further back we go, the bigger the shift. The Declaration of Independence, for example, represents a version of English that is noticeably different than that which we use to communicate today.

What are the main grammatical differences between Thomas Jefferson’s version of English and our own?

Should I Use Will or Would in an If-Clause?

Many writers wonder if it’s equally correct to use “will” or “would” in an if-clause. The short answer is no, but there are exceptions to the rule. An if- or when-clause (often used to form conditional sentences) generally does not contain “will,” which is the simple future tense of the verb “to be.” One exception is when the action in the if- or when-clause takes place after that in the main clause.

7 Tips for Formulating the Perfect Five-Paragraph Essay.

Do you want to write a five-paragraph essay that makes your mama proud? In case you missed it, here’s the secret ingredient: structure. These seven tips will help you formulate the perfect five-paragraph essay.

Start With an Outline

Mapping out your essay before you begin writing helps you stay on point. Start by jotting down the following subheads, inserting ideas and research as you see fit.