Sunday 28 April 2002

What Does Lmk Mean?

  • Lmk is an abbreviation of let me know.
  • The abbreviation is used the same way the spelled-out phrase is used, but you should avoid it in formal communication.

When you need people to get back to you with additional information about something, lmk is one of the phrases you can use to ask for it.

The Meaning of Lmk

Lmk is short for let me know. People have been using it for at least fifteen years.

Tuesday 23 April 2002

Cases of Pronouns: Rules and Examples

Case refers to the form a noun or pronoun takes depending on its function in a sentence. English pronouns have three cases: subjective, objective, and possessive.

Subjective Pronouns

The subjective (or nominative) pronouns are I, you (singular), he/she/it, we, you (plural), they and who. A subjective pronoun acts as a subject in a sentence. See the sentences below for illustration:

I have a big chocolate bar.

Tuesday 16 April 2002

3 Quick Tips to Make Your Cover Letters Better

Guest post from Brie Weiler Reynolds

For job seekers, making a strong first impression is crucial. With employers spending so little time screening cover letters and resumes before deciding if your application will make it to the next round, it’s imperative to use that precious space well. Your cover letter acts as an introduction between yourself and the employer. That’s why it’s so important to take the time to make customized, quality cover letters to help your application stand out.

Wednesday 10 April 2002

“Dear Tooth Fairy”: Letter-writing As Magical Persons

By Laura Wallis for The Stir by CafeMom

Few things are as monumental in an elementary-school kid’s life than losing a tooth. It’s a rite of passage, and it usually means an exciting thing is about to happen: the Tooth Fairy is going to pay a visit.

Just tucking the tooth under the pillow is usually enough to get a reward in exchange, but putting it in an envelope or folded up inside a sheet of paper means it’s less likely to get lost—and that presents a great opportunity to make some fun memories.

Friday 5 April 2002

Realise or Realize?

Realise and realize are different spellings of the same word, and they can be used interchangeably. Both are common throughout the English-speaking world, though in different areas. Realize is preferred in American and Canadian English, while realise is preferred outside North America.

You can find more details about these spelling differences below.

Realise or Realize—Which Should I Use?

Thursday 28 March 2002

5 Inspiring Authors to Read During Black History Month

February was officially recognized as Black History Month by the US government in 1976 as part of the US bicentennial, although its beginnings date to the establishment of Negro History Week in 1926. It’s a month to remember important events and people in African-American history. We’ve selected five inspiring authors to read during Black History Month as a remembrance of the great contributions of African-Americans who achieved literary acclaim.

Tuesday 26 March 2002

How long did you study grammar in school?

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.

Wednesday 20 March 2002

Sequence of Tenses–Grammar Rules

The rules governing verb tenses are dictated by logic; an action in the future obviously cannot happen before an action in the past. In writing, it’s a matter of looking at your clauses and sentences and determining when each action is happening relative to everything else. The past must come before the present, and the present before the future, etc. Pay particular attention to the verb sequence when you have a dependent clause before an independent clause, or a result clause before the if-clause.

Sunday 17 March 2002

Job Seekers: What’s Wrong with Your Resume? Probably More than You Think.

#WhatIWrite: Cover Letters and Resumes

More than two thirds of salaried jobs require a significant amount of writing, making written communication a key consideration in hiring. Yet, top organizations still spend more than $3 Billion (with a “B”!) per year on remedial training to improve employees’ writing to baseline standards.

Cover letters and resumes are, not surprisingly, a great way for potential employers to assess candidate’s writing skills.

Tuesday 5 March 2002

I Before E Except After C: 9 Helpful Spelling Rules

Learning spelling conventions can help you write with confidence. Which of the following rules are new to you?

S or ies?

To make a noun plural, you usually add S. However, you might have noticed that some words that end in Y deviate from the norm. For example, babies is the plural form of baby. How do you know when to change Y to ies? Look at the letter before the Y to find out.

Monday 4 March 2002

How Language Represents Color

Every language represents colors with different words. Linguists have found some interesting patterns in how colors are represented in language. Let’s look at some of their most intriguing findings.

Predictable Sets of Colors

All languages distinguish colors. However, some languages represent colors in only two basic groups. Linguists found that all languages that have only two color distinctions base them on black (or dark) and white (or light).

Wednesday 27 February 2002

How to Ask for Days Off (And Actually Get Them)

There’s a good possibility that you need a day (or two, or more) off work. NPR, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health conducted a poll and found that about half of Americans who work fifty-plus hours a week don’t take all or most of the vacation they’ve earned. Of those who do take time off, about 30 percent say they do a significant amount of work during what’s supposed to be their hard-earned leisure time.

Tuesday 19 February 2002

A Grammar Lesson: Direct and Indirect Objects

An object is the part of a sentence that gives meaning to the subject’s action of the verb. For example: Alice caught the baseball. Subject=Alice Verb=caught Object=baseball

A direct object answers the question of who(m) or what. In the sentence above, you could determine that ‘baseball’ is a direct object by asking the question: What did Alice catch? She caught the baseball.

Thursday 14 February 2002

Thru vs. Through—Which Is Right?

  • Through can be a preposition, an adjective, and an adverb.
  • Through is the only formally accepted spelling of the word.
  • Thru is an alternate spelling that should be used only in informal writing or when referring to drive-throughs.

As if all the confusion over the words through and threw wasn’t enough, modern English has piled on yet another homophone: thru.

Through vs.

Friday 8 February 2002

5 Pieces of Fiction to Inspire Productivity

With 2017 beginning in earnest and resolutions being made, you may be looking for a way to make your leisure time a little more productive and guilt-free. To that end, there are some excellent pieces of fiction that provide more than just entertainment; they also inspire productivity. These are just a few titles that can motivate and energize you as you set new objectives for the year ahead.

Thursday 31 January 2002

7 Things You Write Every Day That You Probably Forgot About

In some ways, everyone is a writer. Have you thought about how much writing you do in one day? Don’t overlook these seven daily writing tasks!

Emails

According to Lifewire.com, people around the world send more than two billion emails per day. That’s 2.4 million emails every second! The format of some emails closely resembles that of physical letters. For example, business emails contain the salutation, body, and closing that you would find in a business letter.

Monday 28 January 2002

Are Pun Competitions a Real Thing?

Around 400 people gathered on Sunday, November 6, at a Kuala Lumpur coffee shop called The Bee. Inside, there was barely enough room to stand, but that didn’t stop people from having fun and enjoying what they’d all come to witness—Malaysia’s very first pun competition. Adequately titled Pun Competition Malaysia, the event was a massive success, and by the end of it, Malaysia had its first winner of “The Punniest Ever” title, a guy called Zim Ahmadi.

Monday 21 January 2002

Essential History and Guide for Modern Acronym Use (Part 1 of 2)

Guest post from Scott Yates

As founder of a blogging service for business operators too busy to write their own posts, I pay a lot of attention to “good” writing.

We have a wide variety of clients, and our challenges involve the mastery of industry jargon, including acronyms and abbreviations.

So, if a client asks for a piece on search engine optimization or customer resource management — acronymically SEO and CRM — should the blogger just jump in and use the abbreviation, or should we genuflect at the altar of convention and have each abbreviation undergo the initiation of being spelled out at least once?

Wednesday 16 January 2002

This Week in Writing, 8/29-9/4

Happy Friday! Once again it’s time for our weekly roundup of stories about writing, books, and authors. Have something you’d like to see us cover here? Let us know in the comment section!

Our Favorite Stories:

1 Tips for Aspiring Writers in 12 Infographics (Ebook Friendly)

2 Writing Tips from a Supreme Court Justice (Time)

3 J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter Trivia Tweets (Salon)

50 Awesome Holiday Words to Know This December

The holidays are upon us, and these winter celebrations with their many traditions each have a rich and varied vocabulary. ...