I just wrote this sentence three times—twice to change the direction of my opening monologue, and once to fix some structural errors. I did all that picking and all those rewrites before I even wrote another sentence. It took me about five minutes.
Why did I fiddle so long with one sentence? I have a hard time getting my internal editor to quiet down, so I developed the habit of self-editing as I write.
Any Google News search for “political correctness” will yield three general groups of results: pieces slamming one public figure or another for their lack of politically correct discourse, thinkpieces describing why the “PC police” are ruining free speech, and articles debating whether certain actions or speech patterns are “politically correct.”
While online pundits and thinkpiece authors spend a lot of energy debating whether terms or usages are PC, or condemning certain figures for their use or avoidance of PC language, there aren’t as many discussions about the history of politically correct language.
About three years ago, I decided to take a huge leap of faith. I sold almost everything I owned, packed my Toyota Sienna from floor to headliner with the stuff too precious to part with, and headed 2,000 miles west across rivers and mountains to an apartment I’d rented sight-unseen in a city I’d only ever driven past on vacation once. It’s the single scariest and best thing I’ve ever done.
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.
Some say you are what you eat. What about what you listen to? Edison Research found that people who listen to podcasts “often take action in direct response” to what they hear. If you have a career goal, it only makes sense that listening to an informational or motivational podcast on the subject will help you. Here are seven of the best podcasts for improving life at work.
By Anne Wayman
Recently a reader of my writing blog asked the following (edited for clarity):
What’s your opinion about using you instead of one when you’re writing for the web or for magazines? Some experts, including Grammarly, say it should beone. I think using you is more engaging.
Thanks, Irene.
Here’s how I expect to answer her:
Irene, I agree, generally informal writing is more engaging than formal writing.
Every child grows up with a certain book that resonates with him or her, but there are some books that have a reached a level of such popularity that they become staples in the childhoods of people everywhere. Reading is an important experience as a kid; it fuels the imagination and implants moral suggestions for how to deal with the world from a young age. That makes children’s books powerfully suggestive and entirely important in the life of a child.
Did you know that St. Patrick’s Day, which is on March 17, is celebrated differently in the United States and Ireland? Irish-Americans initially celebrated the holiday as a show of solidarity and strength of the Irish in a foreign land; the celebrations have evolved to include parades, shamrocks, green outfits, green beer, and corned beef and cabbage. In Ireland, it’s a religious holiday and, in the past, the pubs would close; today, there are parades and shamrocks for tourists, but you’d be hard-pressed to find corned beef and cabbage anywhere.
Spelling words isn’t always easy, especially when they contain double letters. In this case, the correct spelling is occurred. How can you remember it when you need it?
The best way to remember how to spell occurred is to remember its double set of double consonants. In English, the final letter is doubled when a word of two or more syllables has stress on the final syllable.
Have you ever flown in an airplane? Thrust is one of the things that makes the aircraft move in the sky. According to HowStuffWorkst, thrust is “the aerodynamic force that pushes or pulls the airplane forward through space.” Planes use jet engines or propellers to create thrust.
So, you want to know what your English grammar level is? You’ve come to the right place. This post will cover the answers and additional learning resources for “Grammar Skills Test—Intermediate.” The Intermediate test covers subject-verb agreement, modifiers, word order, tenses, conditionals, negative constructions, and auxiliary verbs.
Correct answers are highlighted.
We know that libraries are portals to amazing knowledge and insight, but libraries themselves are also pretty amazing. Here are 5 facts about libraries that will amaze you.
1. According to the American Library Association, 58% of adults in the United States have a library card.
2. The Library of Congress is the world’s largest library. It contains over 160 million items!
The reader must understand that they are at the mercy of the author’s imagination.
What’s wrong with the sentence above? Some might say there is nothing at all is wrong with it. Others, however, will take issue with the use of ‘they,’ a plural pronoun, in place of the singular ‘reader.’ How can this sentence be corrected? Some would use ‘he’ in place of ‘they,’ with the understanding that masculine pronouns are a stand-in for proper nouns of either gender.
We tend to look at the world’s problems with sustainable development and environmental troubles as the burning issues of our time. The environmentalist movement has been gaining momentum for the last couple of decades, and at this point, most of us should acknowledge that the world has a problem and that we need to fix it. For those purposes, here’s a short list of influential authors who will help inspire the environmentalist in you.
Grammarly recently compiled a list of the 25 most recent tweets from each of the top 150+ celebrities on Twitter, based on number of followers. Our team of proofreaders then corrected these tweets for spelling and grammar errors. Here’s a general overview of what we found:
Linking verbs are verbs that serve as a connection between a subject and further information about that subject. They do not show any action; rather, they “link” the subject with the rest of the sentence. The verb to be is the most common linking verb, but there are many others, including all the sense verbs.
A handful—a very frequently used handful—of verbs are always linking verbs:
People are often surprised to learn that alright is not an accepted spelling of all right. Although the one-word spelling of alright is seen in informal writing, teachers and editors will always consider it incorrect. To use the expression with impunity, it is best to spell it as two words: all right.
It’s possible that you stared at your paper in wonder the first time your English teacher marked alright as an incorrect spelling.
Inbox dread is real.
The last time I took a vacation, I almost didn’t want to leave for fear of what my inbox would look like when I got back. (Hint: it wasn’t pretty.) There’s nothing more groan-inducing on your first day back at work than opening your email client to see you have 1,487 emails waiting.
I’ve worked in jobs where getting a flurry of daily email was the norm, which meant that being away for a week resulted in a digital avalanche.
The future continuous tense, sometimes also referred to as the future progressive tense, is a verb tense that indicates that something will occur in the future and continue for an expected length of time. It is formed using the construction will + be + the present participle (the root verb + -ing).
The simple future tense is a verb tense that is used when an action is expected to occur in the future and be completed.
