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.
Job hunting is no one’s favorite activity. Customizing your resume and cover letter for each position (not to mention typing the same information found in the resume you just attached into various application systems) can be grueling work. Job hunting is a full-time job, and you’re not getting paid a dime for it.
Getting organized can save you time and make the process less frustrating.
New words come into use, old words slowly fade away. It’s a natural, all-too-familiar cycle. We’ve already covered words that may be headed toward extinction. Here are five more words in various stages of endangerment. But, who knows? Maybe some of them can still be saved—but should we save all of them?
Tag isn’t a word that’ll disappear anytime soon, as long as things still cost money and come with price tags.
Want to write a bestselling novel? Or maybe you’re more the screenplay type who wants to go straight to Hollywood. Whatever your writing goals are, sometimes the biggest obstacle between them and you is a nasty case of writer’s block. How can you free up your creative juices and write a story worth telling? Here are some ideas to get you started.
Go Wild for Words
Stephen King holds thesauruses (thesauri for you prescriptive Latin-lovers) in disdain, but don’t be afraid to rebel against his viewpoint.
Typos–we all hate them–but are some typos more unforgivable than others? That depends largely on what you are writing and for what audience. Below are several typo scenarios ranging from green light (no problem, speed on ahead) to yellow (caution) to red light (zero, and I do mean zero, typos allowed). A good general rule of thumb is the wider the audience and more formal the setting, the less “allowable” the typos.
If writing dates has you stymied at times, it is probably for one of two reasons. The first is that date formats vary the world over, and we come across these different styles frequently in our reading. The second may be that you aren’t quite sure how to write dates with commas.
The key to overcoming your struggle with dates is to understand the prevailing conventions and then apply them clearly—and consistently.
Scientific writing is known for its precision and accuracy. Other forms of written and spoken communication, however, are often filled with confusing and ambiguous vocabulary. Here are four words we’ve poached from the scientific world that should be adopted in non-scientific communication.
Abstract In scientific writing, an abstract summarizes the key points of a presentation or paper.
