Today, the Grammarly team officially announced the availability of its Grammarly® Add-in for Microsoft® Office Suite. The add-in combines the power of Grammarly’s automated proofreading technology with Microsoft® Office Word™ and Microsoft® Office Outlook®.
In addition to checking for more than 250 common grammar errors and enhancing vocabulary usage, the Grammarly add-in offers unique features such as citation suggestions.
Does your writing feel cluttered?
Over winter, you fell into the habit of drafting dense paragraphs that feel stuffy and humid, like a cramped apartment with a wheezing, determined radiator. Or your structure fell into madness, like a closet seething with mysterious solvents, loathsome sporting gear, and drawers of mismatched screws.
Now’s the time to dust off your style, haul out the verbiage, and ready your next project for sunshine and daffodils.
Whether you work in a busy office or a busy home, there’s plenty to distract you. Besides preventing you from getting things done, distractions can negatively impact your work relationships. For example, careless errors and forgotten appointments can damage your reputation in the eyes of your clients and colleagues. Don’t let it happen to you! Let’s identify strategies to fight thirteen common work distractions.
Some people let poetry intimidate them because they get the idea that poetry is all about rhyming, iambic pentameter, and obscure language. While it is true that some of the most beautiful poems are also difficult to understand, poetry in general isn’t that tough. By following some simple guidelines, you can pen verses that are poignant, pure, and easy on the ears.
It is sometimes said that the United States and the United Kingdom are two countries separated by a common language. Despite the fact that English is the most widely used language in both countries, a distinction is often made between the English used in the United States—American English—and the English used in the United Kingdom—British English. The differences between the two varieties of English are usually subtle, but they exist nonetheless, particularly around spelling.
Reading poetry is a wonderful experience, but have you ever memorized and recited a poem? Saying the words aloud gives the poem new life and highlights some of the nuances in the language. Here are three short poems you can memorize and recite for your friends and family.
“First Fig” by Edna St. Vincent Millay My candle burns at both ends; It will not last the night; But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends— It gives a lovely light.
Everytime should be written as two separate words: every time. While some compound words like everywhere, everyday, and everyone have become commonplace in the English language, everytime is not considered an acceptable compound word. Consider the examples below:
In November, Grammarly worked with ~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! The infographic below shows which mistakes were the most common in our writers’ first drafts.
What do you think about the state of writing in the workplace? Share your thoughts in our weekly poll!
Every year on February 26th, Tell a Fairy Tale Day celebrates the art of storytelling. Though you may not read traditional fairy tales very often any more, chances are that many of the story threads throughout your favorite books and movies have their roots in fairy tales. Here are six ways to have fun with storytelling on Tell a Fairy Tale Day.
Take a Trip to Your Local Library
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.
Just about everyone I know is a procrastinator on some level. Going by Malcolm Gladwell’s “10,000-Hour Rule”, basically every college student is an expert procrastinator. But procrastination doesn’t mean putting off work forever and never doing it. For most people (even college students!), work that gets put off must eventually get done. From this perspective, the real masters of putting off work are those who still manage to get everything done and done well.
The recognized and correct past tense form of the verb drag is dragged. Drug can still sometimes be heard, but only in certain dialects within the United States.
Sometimes, a group of people have a way of speaking that’s particular to them. It can be a phrase they’ve coined. It can be a bending of the generally accepted linguistic norms. It can be pronunciation, spelling, or grammar misinterpretations.
Email correspondence makes it simple, easy, and convenient to quickly contact coworkers and family members across the world. However, it isn’t all roses with email. If you don’t follow proper etiquette, you can end up annoying your recipients. You’ve probably already heard about basic email etiquette tips, like using a specific subject line and replying as quickly as you can, but there is more you can do to ensure that your emails resonate with the people you send them to.
There are very few things more annoying than a glaring grammar error in an otherwise acceptable piece of writing.
As lovers of language, you and I have a natural instinct to fix these errors. How do we deal, for example, with declarations that tweak our nose?
“I like her to.”
“Its a cold day.”
Seriously, people?!
Sometimes these grammar hiccups seem engineered to drive us up a wall, and they begin to take on a sinister quality.
The Not-So-Sweet 16 rages on with this set of obnoxious inbox-stuffers. Which bothers you more, autonotification emails, or emails from coworkers who should have messaged you elsewhere? Honestly, we don’t love either.
Ready to vote to determine the next round of March MADness? We know we are!
Autonotification Email Hell
Autonotifications are sent automatically when someone updates a task, project, or chat.
Donut is an alternate spelling of doughnut. Some dictionaries point out that donut is rarely used outside the United States. All of them recognize doughnut as the main spelling, as do some of the more popular style guides. Doughnut might be the spelling you should use if you want to be sure you’re not making a mistake.
Doughnuts: the thing no stereotypical law enforcement officer can be seen without.
One of the best things about language is its malleability. You can switch around a few letters, relocate a comma, or replace a pronoun, and you’ve suddenly changed the meaning of a sentence. The same principle applies to product logos. A small change can make a big — and hilarious — difference. Here is a short list of some side-splittingly funny product knock-offs from around the world.
Many of us have special memories of books that changed our worlds as children. I’ll never forget snuggling up next to my dad while he read a section of C.S. Lewis’s The Chronicles of Narnia to my brother and me each night before bed. Here are five books and series for kids that we recommend re-reading as an adult:
The Little House series by Laura Ingalls Wilder Based on Wilder’s experiences growing up on the American frontier, the Little House series paints an intimate portrait of an exciting time in American history.
