The Not-So-Sweet 16 round of March MADness has begun! So far, we’ve started the voting for work chat pet peeves, and these two contenders are both pretty atrocious. Which habit annoys you more? Vote below!
Early-Morning Chatters
These folks are up in the wee small hours of the morning, sending out updates to group chats—either pinging you awake as you catch your last few hours of sleep or inundating your mornings with messages to attend to.
In November, Grammarly worked with around 300 writers from 27 countries (and 44 U.S. states) to write a group novel for National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo). We called the project #GrammoWriMo; and, clocking in at a total of 130,927 unedited words, we are proud to say that our draft was among the 41,940 completed!
We kicked off the editing process right away by running the text of the novel through our automated proofreader to check for spelling, grammar, and punctuation mistakes.
What is more special than a promise? As children (and let’s be honest, as adults, too) we valued promises highly among our friends and family. The act of promising and the act of being worth promising something to elevates our relationships. It’s a perfect example of how beautiful and powerful words can be.
There are a lot of amazing activities we do with words and language.
Cell phones hit the free market 30 years ago, but Americans still haven’t internalized a complete set of social rules for cell phone usage. If you’re not sure what’s acceptable in the world of cell phone etiquette, check out these five tips in honor of Cell Phone Courtesy Month in July.
When you’re engrossed in a phone conversation, it’s easy to fool yourself into believing that no one can hear you except the person on the other end of the line.
Writers have a lot on their plates. They have to fend off writer’s block, perform meticulous research, and ensure the content they produce captivates their target audiences. They must pay close attention to catch grammatical errors, misspellings, punctuation mistakes, and typos. Formatting often takes a backseat on a writer’s priority list–especially when it involves something so seemingly trivial as indentation.
You’re jittery, sweaty, and unable to focus. What had seemed like the perfect dose of java to power all your feats of Monday superheroism has betrayed you.
In the throes of a caffeine come-down, as you blearily attempt to finish drafting your project update, you swear:
“I’m going to quit coffee.”
Though there are good reasons for healthy people to consume coffee in moderation, some individuals may find themselves overdoing it or may be simply too sensitive to the acidity or caffeine.
How do you feel when you can’t communicate your ideas or emotions? If you find it frustrating, why not make a study of communication skills? Learning to communicate is like learning to swim. You progress from breathing exercises in a few feet of water to practicing laps in deeper water. Before you know it, you’re ready for the diving board. Let’s review some books, starting with some simple fixes based on personal experiences.
Each vs. every is a common grammar issue, even for proficient writers, because let’s face it—they’re very similar words. Although both words refer to something that is singular, each refers to an individual object or person, while the term every refers to a group of objects or people lumped together as one. For example, consider the following sentences:
The past continuous tense, also known as the past progressive tense, refers to a continuing action or state that was happening at some point in the past. The past continuous tense is formed by combining the past tense of to be (i.e., was/were) with the verb’s present participle (-ing word).
There are many situations in which this verb tense might be used in a sentence.
As we get nearer to the end of December, we are reminded of why it’s called the most wonderful time of the year. It’s the season of holidays, with Christmas, Kwanzaa, Hanukkah, and Mawlid usually celebrated within a month of one another. And then there’s the New Year, a great opportunity to commit ourselves to plans and resolutions we’ll never actually make good on. This time of year is a great opportunity to remind ourselves of some of the words we have at our disposal to express all the wonder that’s going on.
An en dash is a mid-sized dash (longer than a hyphen but shorter than an em dash) that is mostly used to show ranges in numbers and dates. It can also be used for clarity in forming complex compound adjectives. The en dash derives its name from the fact that it is meant to be the same width as the letter N.
A properly executed en dash is especially important in scientific and mathematical writing because it is used between numbers to represent the wordto.
Graduation. Ten letters that spell either “opportunity,” or “pure, unadulterated terror,” depending on your plans for after you walk across the stage and officially become a college grad. If you have your post-grad life figured out, congratulations! You’re ahead of the game. Kick back, read a book, and wait for real life to hit you.
But if you have no idea what you’re going to do, or are hustling to land that first gig, don’t worry.
You can’t leave the Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows after reading only ten entries, and you can’t spread the word about one of the best websites on the Internet in just one article. So here we go, ten more words from the great fictional dictionary describing feelings and sensations you’ll recognize as soon as you read their descriptions.
Ambedo is the melancholic, almost hypnotic state you get into when you focus on sensory details like the flickering of a candle or tall trees swaying in the wind and you start thinking about the frailty of life.
In between should always appear as two words. Although inbetween is common, it is a misspelling and does not appear in any English dictionary. Unnecessarily adding in to between is also a common grammatical mistake. As a compound adjective, in-between should be hyphenated.
When we speak, we often add in before between when it isn’t needed.
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.
Welcome to the Not-So-Sweet 16 round of March MADness! In our quest to find the most annoying work pet peeve, we’ve had some real battles. Some were obvious choices, while others were more evenly matched. And now, we’re out to determine the winners of each of our “conferences:” chat, email, phone calls, and old-fashioned, in-person talking. Which horrible habit will reign supreme?
To many Americans, Super Bowl Sunday is synonymous with junk food, cheering, the best new commercials, and possibly the sensation of winning (or losing) a war. People in other countries sometimes wonder if the prize is a very large bowl.
It’s not just the fascination with football that befuddles non-Americans—it’s the very words we use to describe it. That goes for sports-related words in general, especially when we compare certain terms in American English to their British counterparts.
Getting interrupted is no fun. Whether it’s at work or with a friend or family member, being the interruptee can make you feel disrespected and unheard. The good news: there are strategies for dealing with interrupters.
First, approach the situation differently based on the context and kind of interrupting. Here are some examples:
Sick of unfocused, unproductive meetings? The average office meeting is a modern-day implement of torture, dragging on forever while everyone talks in circles and your annoying coworker (yeah, there’s one in every crowd) hijacks the meeting with his ramblings.
But it doesn’t have to be this way. A well-run meeting will last a bearable amount of time, get everyone aligned and on the same page, and develop clear next steps for what you’re trying to achieve together.
