What Is Verbing?

• To verb a noun means to use an ordinary noun as a verb in a sentence.
• English is flexible about the grammatical function of individual words. If you use a noun in the verb slot of a sentence, most people will understand what you mean.
• Be careful about verbing in very formal contexts, especially when there is already a common verb that would convey your meaning. Some people find verbing annoying.

Make Friday Your Most Productive Day

Is Friday a super productive work day? Or are you starting to wonder why you bother coming in at all? For many of us, getting through the day on Friday (especially the afternoon) can be a real struggle.

Who doesn’t get that #FridayFeeling?

Leaving the Office on a Friday GIF from Scrubs GIFs

After a long week of getting stuff done, we’re just ready for the weekend to begin.

How to Use “-Esque”?

• The suffix -esque means “like” or “resembling.”
• You can add -esque to almost any noun, including proper nouns.
• Use restraint. Too many -esque words in the same passage may seem clumsy and repetitive.
• Don’t pile on redundant suffixes that mean the same thing as -esque (e.g., “picturesque-like”).

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If someone called you a statue, you might not find it so flattering. However, if someone called you statuesque, you would probably thank them for the compliment.

Why Do We Say ’Tis the Season?

If you’ve seen the classic holiday movie, National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation, then you’ll probably remember this scene. Family man Clark Griswold stands at the lingerie counter of a large department store chatting up the pretty sales girl. After bumbling through the conversation and making a fool of himself, he smiles and says, “‘Tis the season to be merry!”

But where did ’tis the season, a phrase we use during the festive build-up to the end-of-year holidays, originate?

How to End an Email: 9 Best and Worst Email Sign-Offs

You’ve worked to make your email clear, and you’ve carefully edited to streamline your writing. The body of your email might well be perfect, but it can all go awry if you use the wrong sign-off. It’s just a word or a short phrase, followed by your signature, and yet finding the right tone to close your email often requires a surprising amount of thought and finesse.

“How Well Can You Translate Business Jargon to Plain Language?” Quiz

“Synergistic.”

“Alignment.”

“Piggyback.”

“Engagement.”

“Low-hanging fruit.”

Business jargon seems to be taking over our offices. Aside from being cringe-worthy and borderline cliche, business jargon or “management speak” makes communication vague and unhelpful.

Additionally, this kind of “code language” can be extremely isolating to new people or people from other cultures, where business jargon is not widely used.

The Basics of Good Proofreading

After you finish writing something, do you read it over? Hopefully yes, but reading is not proofreading. The process of reading for enjoyment or information is significantly different from the process of proofreading. How so? To proofread is to examine a document with the express purpose of finding and correcting errors in grammar, spelling, and punctuation. Let’s compare and contrast reading and proofreading.

Grammar Basics: What Is Sentence Inversion?

Besides the question mark, how can you tell a question from a statement? One way is to look for sentence inversion. In statements, the subject usually comes before the verb. Questions invert the subject and the verb. In other words, the verb comes first, as in this example: Are you going to need a ride home from school? Sentence inversion isn’t a foolproof method for identifying a question, however.

Small Talk 101 for Shy People in the Office

Small Talk 101 Syllabus

Course Description

Getting to know others in your office by striking up small talk conversations is an anxiety-inducing social activity, coming in right behind team-building exercises like the trust fall and that relay thing where you have to race around with a raw egg on a spoon. That goes double for introverted or shy people. This course will provide the student with five no-fail tips for striking up a conversation and sample scripts to demonstrate good small talk in action.

Emigrate vs. Immigrate–What’s the Difference?

• Emigrate means to leave one location, such as one’s native country or region, to live in another.
• Immigrate means to move into a non-native country or region to live.
• Associate the I of immigrate with “in” to remember that the word means moving into a new country.

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Is emigrate an alternative spelling of immigrate? If not, what’s the difference between immigrate and emigrate?

Eight Christmas Grammar Mistakes That Will Make You Think

How many times have you seen “Happy Holidays from the Jones’s” or “Mary Christmas” in a Christmas card?

When you’re working through a stack of Christmas cards, it can be difficult to cross your t’s and dot your i’s, let alone remember a series of seemingly random holiday-related grammar rules. So, in the spirit of holiday giving, we’re giving you eight Christmas grammar tips for LitMas.

Everyone vs. Every One?

Everyone vs. Every One

The pronoun everyone may be replaced by everybody. It is used to refer to all the people in a group. Written as two words, every one emphasizes each individual who makes up a group, and it means each person.

Unlike every time or everytime, everyone vs. every one is a decision that must be made with consideration to the meaning of the term in the context of your writing.

5 Essays Every Student Needs to Know How to Write

An essay is a brief composition on a specific topic. The most common essay types are analytical, argumentative, critical, expository, and narrative.

Students write essays. You knew that already. But do you know what kinds of essays students write? Here are the basics of how to write five different types of essays.

Analytical Essays

To analyze means to examine carefully or critically.

How Should I Use There, Their, and They’re?

• There means the opposite of here; “at that place.”
• Their means “belongs to them.”
• They’re is a contraction of “they are” or “they were.”

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There, their, and they’re are the big trio of commonly confused words. All three of them are pronounced the same, and the spelling differences don’t seem to do a good job of stopping people from mixing them up.

What Does There Mean?

How to Write a Résumé Like a Seasoned Pro

Writing a résumé is not that different from writing a sales pitch: the writer is the product and the reader is the potential customer. The résumé has to grab the attention of the prospective employer. It needs to showcase why and how the applicant would be a valuable asset to the employer. In the best case scenario, a well-written résumé prompts the employer to pick up the phone and call the applicant immediately.

Is Using “As Soon As Possible” Rude?

Your co-worker just sent you a message on Slack:

Bossy McBosserpants

I need the report as soon as possible

What runs through your head? Along with potential anxiety about a looming deadline (looks like you’re eating lunch at your desk again) you may feel annoyance. After all, that demand sounded pretty darn pushy.

via GIPHY

Requests that include “as soon as possible” (or the ubiquitous acronym ASAP) can come across as rude.

Two Underrated Christmas Stories to Read This Season

Welcome to Day Two of LitMas, the holiday for bookworms of all sorts! Yesterday, we gave you one short poem by Longfellow, and today we have another gift to share.

On the second day of LitMas, we’re paying homage to LitMas’s distant cousin, Christmas, with two stories you can read in less than an hour about this fascinating holiday. They’re both old enough to be classics, although neither of them gets as much attention as the “Night Before Christmas” and “Christmas Carol” set.

How to Write Nowhere, Somewhere, and Anywhere?

There’s only one way to write nowhere, somewhere, and anywhere, and that is as one word. If you write them as no where, some where, and any where, you’re making a mistake.

He was no where to be found.

Tony tried to build his own business, but it went nowhere.

More Examples

Some where over the rainbow there’s candy waiting for you.

He lost his key somewhere on his route home.

4 Fictional Families We Wish We Were Born Into

Our favorite authors create worlds, characters, and relationships that feel real to us. Here are four groups of siblings from literature we wish we were related to:

The March sisters in Little Women by Louisa May Alcott Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy March show us what true sisterhood is all about. They make up each other’s worlds, acting as playmates, enemies, counselors, and friends.