In this article, here’s what you’ll discover:
So let’s get started, shall we?
Just how bad are distractions for your productivity?
Some types of jerk behavior are obvious. Calling names. Laughing at someone’s ideas. Stealing a coworker’s lunch out of the office refrigerator (come on, are you an animal?).
But it’s also possible to be a jerk by accident, especially in writing. Have you ever found yourself worrying that your two-sentence email will sound cold to the person on the other end? Or are you just now realizing that’s something you should worry about? (You should—warmth may be even more important than competence when it comes to establishing business relationships.)
Like birthdays, Christmas, and Hanukkah, Father’s Day can be rough. Yes, it is a great opportunity to recognize our fathers (and father figures) for their profound impact in our lives, but it is also a time when many of us feel tongue-tied.
How can we tell dad exactly what he means to us in a simple card or letter? Here are five tips for writing the perfect note to dad in honor of Father’s Day:
The adverbs continuously and continually (and their corresponding adjectives, continuous and continual) are words that are confused easily and often. Continuously describes an action that happens without ceasing. Continually, on the other hand, describes an action that recurs frequently or regularly.
The confusion about whether to use continually or continuously is understandable, because both words share the same Latin root, continuare, meaning “to join together or connect.” Only the endings of the words are different, and over time, the two words have evolved with subtly distinct meanings.
If you’ve ever played Dungeons & Dragons or listened to Destiny’s Child, chances are likely that you have heard the words bugbear and bugaboo. For the D&D players of the world, a bugbear is a hairy, giant-like goblin. For Destiny’s Child fans, a bugaboo is a particularly annoying boy who just won’t stop calling you (or paging you, or showing up to your house unannounced).
This poll is part of a series that Grammarly is running aimed at better understanding how the public feels about writing, language learning, and grammar.
Please take the poll and share your thoughts in the comments. We can’t wait to hear from you!
If you are interested in more, check out last week’s poll.
Guest Post by Richard McMunn from How2become.com
The world of book publishing has evolved over the past few decades so much so that a publishing expert 20 years ago would struggle to get an entry level job in today’s market with their skill set from that time. There are varying opinions in the industry on some pivotal elements but one thing is certain, the accessibility for individuals to self-publish is more open and transparent than it has ever been.
When it comes to writing and celebrity, most people assume all celebrities use ghostwriters. These stars—among others—prove that point wrong. We’ve analyzed a list of talented celebrities and built a quiz to help you find out which celebrity writer is just like you.
What do you think? Did we get it right? Share your reactions in the comments.
On the ninth day of LitMas . . .
. . . you get nine wonderful novellas!
Novellas tend to fly under the radar. Readers know what to expect from short stories, and they know what they’re getting into with novels, but novellas fall into an ill-defined space somewhere between short story and novel. Some people think of them simply as very short novels—others have more specific criteria.
The future perfect continuous, also sometimes called the future perfect progressive, is a verb tense that describes actions that will continue up until a point in the future. The future perfect continuous consists of will + have + been + the verb’s present participle (verb root + -ing).
When we describe an action in the future perfect continuous tense, we are projecting ourselves forward in time and looking back at the duration of that activity.
You may not think about it much, but having a brain and using it requires a lot of energy.
Despite making up just 2 percent of the average adult’s body weight, the brain uses more than 20 percent of the body’s total energy. There’s no 80/20 rule at work here; the human brain is far and away the most energy-consumptive organ in the body.
And that’s not all.
According to brain studies, the amount of fuel needed for your brain is constant, meaning your brain is always hungry.
Let’s say you’ve written your very first novel, and you’re shopping it around to various publishers. And they generally like it, or at least one of them does, but they have a weird request—you need to change your name before they’ll publish the book. Not legally, of course. That would be silly. Just, you know, assume a pen name or use your initials instead of your full name because it might help you reach certain segments of the market.
The Grammarly team collected 500 active job postings, including marketing and engineering jobs, from the top 100 most profitable companies in the United States. We then assessed how each company used language in these listings to express hiring priorities.
Whether a bad day’s got you down, you don’t love speaking up, or you’re constantly playing the comparison game, chances are good that you could use an added dose of confidence at work.
In some cases, decision-makers in any job setting put more stock in confidence than competence when they’re making picks for a promotion or filling out a performance review. Don’t get overlooked or undervalued because you’re not projecting your best.
Imperative can be one of the following:
Imperative is one of those words that shouldn’t be thrown around unless there’s a very good reason for it.
Writers of the world, unite! Creators of content are always on the lookout for more, well, content. Sometimes that means research, sometimes that means tips on building a business, and sometimes that just means looking at cool stuff and feeling inspired.
If you’re a fiction writer, content marketer, journalist, designer, or other kind of content creator in search of suggestions specific to the type of writing you do, head on over to Grammarly’s colossal list of tips, techniques, ideas, and sources for all your content creation needs (and maybe more).
In the world of digital communications, pretty much everyone can relate to an email experience going terribly wrong at work. Ever hit “reply all” and sprayed a private message to a group of co-workers and lived to regret it?
Writing internal business communications shouldn’t be fraught with peril, but for these unfortunate executives, things went terribly wrong. From the ridiculous to the tragic, take a look at these five truly terrible business memos.
