Language changes over time. The popularity of words, especially slang or words related to technology or trends, ebbs and flows. Some long-forgotten words, however, are worth resurrecting. If you’re looking to add a retro update to your vocabulary, here are a few words and phrases from the last hundred years to try out.
1920s: The cat’s meow: The best or greatest. Your iPhone case is the cat’s meow!
You know that embarrassing moment when you’re part of a bar sing-along, and as you confidently wail gibberish lyrics to a classic song, the other patrons turn to look at and silently judge you for being totally clueless? Misheard lyrics, while hilarious, are a sure way to lose your credibility as a music lover. Help prevent a friend or even yourself from ruining a sing-along to a classic hit by finally learning the real lyrics to these often misquoted hits.
Should all educators have to pass basic grammar in order to teach? Several months ago, Grammarly polled, and over 30,000 people cast their votes. The overwhelming majority, 94 percent, answered yes. But what kinds of skills should be tested? Most states require teachers to pass a test of basic skills, but each state has unique licensure requirements. Generally, the states who use tests focus on math, writing, language arts, and reading comprehension.
The job hunting process can be long and stressful. You’ve crafted the perfect resume, sent out countless cover letters, and now you’ve finally heard back that you’ve got a phone interview. This should be a walk in the park, right? An obligatory step to confirm you’re a real human.
Until you find yourself on the phone with the interviewer and they’re not just chatting you up.
It’s the cutest day of the year—March 21, National Puppy Day! We couldn’t pass up the opportunity to look at dog pictures and wanted to share our favorites. These adorable reading buddies will make your heart melt.
Potato plans to pick up reading habit now!
just planning out our meals for the week ?#ChickenWithBacon #Bacon #AndMoreBacon #Muwahahaha
How great is it to travel? To meet new people, see new places, experience different cultures, live life the way life is lived somewhere else. Plenty of good things are associated with travel, but there’s one particular issue that can make traveling annoying: the spelling. Travel is easy enough to spell and not at all confusing, but “traveling,” “traveler,” “traveled”?
The average recruiter spends about six seconds looking at your resume, and you’ve got to make every one of them count. Do resume objectives help or hurt you?
A resume objective is a short statement that outlines your career direction. Objective statements were once the standard on every job-seeker’s resume. A decade or so ago, you wouldn’t have sent out a resume without one.
Murder, torture, mass death by plague…not exactly the stuff of children’s literature, right? Actually, if you read the rhymes of Mother Goose, it is. Most people don’t realize the macabre history of these innocuous-sounding rhymes, but dig beneath the surface, and you’ll find Mother Goose poetry is chock-full of gruesome imagery.
In fact, many of today’s nursery rhymes are sanitized versions of the grim originals.
Guest post from Tilia Klebenov Jacobs
“My book is about, um, me. Is that okay?”
This is the question I get most often when I teach novel-writing classes. And I say go for it, because every novelist is a memoirist and every memoirist is a novelist. Even the most earnest nonfiction writer must of necessity apply a little fiction here and there, if only because she probably wasn’t taking notes on that watershed conversation thirty years ago. By contrast, the novelist can create a completely fictional character, but as often as not writes about himself. Far from being a cop-out, this can add richness to one’s prose.
When you make a verb past tense, sometimes all you have to do is add -ed. Other times, you double the final consonant before adding it. What about the verb benefit? Is the past tense benefited or benefitted?
The quick answer is that both of them are acceptable.
An omelet (or omelette) is a type of egg dish, often served at breakfast or brunch. Neither spelling is wrong, but there are some guidelines for when to use which.
Omelet is the standard spelling in American English. In fact it appears about twice as often as omelette in American publications.
With Thanksgiving just around the corner, the Grammarly team polled more than 1,700 Facebook fans on what piece of punctuation they are most “thankful” for in their writing.
The semi-colon, em-dash, and period, were top contenders; yet, overwhelmingly we learned that English writers are most thankful for the comma.
Although writers enjoy the comma, many do not know how to use it.
If a perfect game for competitive wordsmiths exists, Scrabble is it. Not only does the game allow you to flex your vocabulary muscles, it also encourages you to use key strategies to increase your score. When you play these seven underused words, you’ll have a winning chance at an all-time Scrabble high score.
Maximize
One of the easiest ways to score big with Scrabble is to use one or more of the highest-ranked letter tiles.
There are certain punctuation standards in British English that are important for a writer to understand. Even the most insightful article might be dismissed by readers because of punctuation errors, even if they have nothing to do with the merit of the content. Some mistakes crop up time and time again, making them understandable, but all the harder to excuse. Consider these punctuation pitfalls in British English that often trap the unwary.
Do you want to help us spread awareness for writing, GrammoWriMo, and NaNoWriMo? Or maybe you just want to show some of your writer-pride? Either way, we’ve put together a special meme for you to customize with your own #IDoIt caption.
To create your own #IDoIt meme to share on Facebook, Twitter, your blog and other social media channels, follow the instructions below:
It’s irrelevant that you’ve been working in your field for years; you’re living in fear of being outed as a fraud. A fake. A phony.
It’s imposter syndrome.
Imposter syndrome is the inability to internalize your successes, coupled with the fear of being outed as an unqualified fraud.
This fear of being exposed as inadequate and unqualified literally keeps you from achieving your best professional self.
If the title of this post doesn’t make any sense, it shouldn’t.
This is going somewhere, I promise! Bear with me.
Today, while scouring Tumblr and various forums for “The Best Picture on the Internet,” I came across the following:
I am certain that most people read to the last frame and, caught up in Johnny Carson’s joke, didn’t think twice about whether or not Dean Martin knew what a dangling participle is.
Along with loose and definitely, separate is one of the most commonly misspelled words in the English language. Separate can be an adjective or a verb. As an adjective, it means set apart, distinct, or not related. As a verb, it means to to set apart, to distinguish, or to divide. Separate is often misspelled as seperate, a word that has no meaning and is simply a misspelling:
As a company striving to make people more productive and successful, we know a thing or two about the importance of having the right tools when there’s a job to be done. But even though Grammarly will help speed up your proofreading, you also need to know how to manage your time if you want to be more productive. That means prioritizing and fighting the urge to procrastinate.
