Do you ever worry that one day someone will invent a robot that puts you out of a job? If you happen to be a choose-your-own adventure novelist, that worry just might have become a little bit more real. Check out that story and a few other highlights from around the web this week. Have something you’d like to see us cover here? Let us know in the comment section!
The guild’s next raid will be a daring one: your small company is barely a month away from unveiling its new product. Everyone in your party will need to understand the plan and play their part in this perilous adventure.
Andrea, a level-thirty design mage, is worried there might be hidden traps en route to the treasure. Ben and Eduardo, both seasoned software paladins, are not certain the team can crank out enough rapid-fire damage to finish off the nefarious code lich in time.
You can say that a book is entitled “so and so,” but to say that it’s titled might be a more elegant and middle-of-the-road solution.
It doesn’t take a large leap of imagination to see how this blog might be read by someone who is working on his or her first book. To those of you who are working on novels, we wish the best of luck, offer some advice, and present you with a conundrum—will you title your book, or will you entitle it?
Whether you are a logophile (word lover) or not, you probably can think of one or two words that you really enjoy using. These words don’t have to be rare or exotic. In fact, sometimes it’s far better if they aren’t. Some of my personal favorites are demure, frank, and stalwart. Why are they my favorites? Well, besides being fun to say, they are concrete and clear.
I’ve decided to run a poll on our Facebook page seeking out the top five favorite words in the English language.
When it comes to language, it turns out that conservatives and liberals are more alike than you might think. The intrepid Grammarly team delved into the unfiltered political maelstrom on Reddit to get a look at how the Trump and Clinton subreddit communities write when they discuss the 2016 U.S. presidential election online. We used the Grammarly app’s powerful algorithms and new political correctness checks to find out not only how many spelling, grammar, and punctuation errors each camp made but also how often the software flagged their language as politically incorrect.
How do you spell color? You’ll see other writers do it two ways—the one we’ve already used in this sentence, and another one—colour. Neither of the spellings is wrong, and they both mean exactly the same thing.
So you have an idea for a story that’s burning a hole in your brain, and you need to find it a home—ideally somewhere that will embrace and enhance your style, share your work with a broad readership, and pay you decently.
In other words, you hope to surmount one of the greatest hurdles that separates the writing world’s dreamers from its doers. No pressure, though.
Guest Post by Rochelle Ceira
Did you know that enneacontakaienneagon is actually a word in the English language? (And you thought pronouncing supercalifragilisticexpialidocious was difficult?). In fact, the meaning of the word is just as bizarre as the word itself: it’s a shape with ninety-nine sides.
Compared to other languages, English may seem simple, but that is probably because most people don’t realize it is full of crazy inventions, misinterpretations, mistakes, strange words, and needless words!
No job candidate is perfect. Everyone has their flaws. Fortunately, employers aren’t looking for perfect people, just the right people.
Honesty is always the best policy during a job interview, but that doesn’t mean you have to put your weaknesses on display. Whether it’s your resume or your personal challenges that might raise red flags with a hiring manager, addressing your weaknesses and framing them in a positive way can help you avoid making excuses or sounding defensive.
I.e. and e.g. are both Latin abbreviations. E.g. stands for exempli gratia and means “for example.” I.e. is the abbreviation for id est and means “in other words.” Remember that E is for example (e.g.) and that I and E are the first letters of in essence, an alternative English translation of i.e.
But why bother with all this Latin? Don’t we have enough abbreviations in English?
Have you ever noticed how, in the English language, some small words sometimes appear in a lot of bigger words? Take the word “friend,” for example. If you notice someone who is acting friendly toward you, you might want to start a friendship, so you befriend her. You don’t want to be friendless, after all, but you also probably don’t want to befriend unfriendly people, so you save your friendliness for those who really deserve it.
Academic writing is the epitome of formality and requires generally strict adherence to various style guides—usually a different standard for each subject. Should academic writing and English remain strict and formal, or is it time to relax the rules a bit?
Even though it’s not a phrase you’ll hear every day, it’s good to know whether beck and call is the correct way to say it, or if it should be beckon call.
The present continuous verb tense indicates that an action or condition is happening now, frequently, and may continue into the future.
The Present Continuous Formula: to be [am, is, are] + verb [present participle]
You’ve likely read sentences in which there was a comma before too, but is this correct usage? Well, it depends on the intention of the writer. When using the word too, you only need to use a comma before it for emphasis. According to The Chicago Manual of Style, a comma before too should be used only to note an abrupt shift in thought. When the too comes in the middle of a sentence, emphasis is almost always intended since it interrupts the natural flow of the sentence.
The New Yorker is a quirky magazine. Sure, it’s a go-to when you’re looking to read high-quality writing, but the magazine’s style is full of peculiarities. There are the double consonants where you don’t expect them, as in the word “travelled.” There’s the spelling out of numbers, even the really long ones. And there are the words like “coöperate” and “reëlect,” which are written with two tiny dots over the second o and the second e.
Cats make frequent literary appearances as fascinating, thought-provoking, and sometimes sneaky characters. From early nursery rhymes to contemporary tales, cats are omnipresent stars and sidekicks. To celebrate Adopt-a-Cat month in June, here are five famous cats that feature prominently in some much-loved books.
The Cat in the Hat
One of the best-known title characters in children’s literature, readers can easily identify the Cat in the Hat by his elongated body, striped hat, and red bow tie.
We all make mistakes. Sometimes, we even embrace them.
Such is the case with language. The words you’re reading right now are the product of centuries of slang, corruption, amalgamation, and lazy habits. The writers of today gently nudge future evolutions of English by choosing which mistakes will be acceptable tomorrow. (For instance, where you use verbs like “stung” and “stunk,” experts believe future writers may instead opt for “stinged” and “stinked.”)
What’s the difference between “assume” and “presume”?
