If you win the morning, you win the day.
Mornings set the tone for your day. If your habits are bad or simply uninspiring, they’ll steamroll your productivity and focus for the whole day. This week, we looked at what a range of successful people do in the morning. Groups included up-and-coming millennials, productivity hackers, and various kinds of leaders.
The present perfect tense refers to an action or state that either occurred at an indefinite time in the past (e.g., we have talked before) or began in the past and continued to the present time (e.g., he has grown impatient over the last hour). This tense is formed by have/has + the past participle.
The construction of this verb tense is straightforward. The first element is have or has, depending on the subject the verb is conjugated with.
A gerund phrase is a phrase consisting of a gerund and any modifiers or objects associated with it. A gerund is a noun made from a verb root plus ing (a present participle). A whole gerund phrase functions in a sentence just like a noun, and can act as a subject, an object, or a predicate nominative.
If you look up the definition of gerund (pronounced JER-und), you will find that it means “an English noun formed from a verb by adding -ing”; that is, a present participle used as a noun.
Should you write regards to close your next letter or email? What does it mean to send your regards, anyway?
Historically, with best regards and with kindest regards have been used as a letter closing—a.k.a. a valediction. In decades past, regards implied not only esteem but also affection; today it sits somewhat higher on the spectrum of formality.
When terms denoting family relationships are used as proper nouns (as names), they are capitalized. However, when the terms are used as common nouns (not as names), they’re not capitalized. Generally, there will be a possessive pronoun (my, her, his, our) or an article (the, a, an) in front of family titles used as common noun.
It’s easy to get confused about whether you should capitalize family names in your writing.
As grammar nerds, we care a lot about correct grammar, spelling, and punctuation. If you’re a grammar lover, maybe you’ve found yourself fighting the urge to correct a misspelled menu item at a restaurant. Perhaps you’ve even corrected a “who” to a “whom” when your friend used the wrong word in a story.
When it comes to grammar correction and education, where is the line between agitating and helping?
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.
A part and apart are often confused, especially by non-native speakers of English. Apart is mostly used as an adverb, denoting a separation between two or more things. A part (two words) means “a fraction of a whole,” or in theatre, “an actor’s role.” Apart from is a frequently used preposition.
Although the two expressions are identical in spelling but for a space, they have two different origins.
There are two types of relative clauses—defining and nondefining. To review, relative clauses can contain a subject, verb, and a relative pronoun, though not all are needed. The relative pronouns are who, whose, when, where, which, and that. Relative clauses are sometimes called adjective or adjectival clauses because they describe nouns like adjectives do. Defining clauses give essential information about the main noun.
In 2015, Grammarly put pro sports fans to the test. We wanted to see who had the best writing chops when they were cheering on their favorite teams online. Our first study— ranking NFL fans by their spelling, grammar, and punctuation—proved so popular that we went on to rank MLB and NBA enthusiasts, as well.
To wrap up the year in sports (Grammarly style), we decided to see which pro sports cities had game.
You’ve just read an interesting article online. It covered a subject you’re passionate about, so you dash off a brilliant comment. It begins:
Your right about most of your assessments, but I think you missed the big picture.
You go on to write a carefully-worded paragraph, and you’re certain everyone who reads it will be dazzled by your brilliant insights. And then the first reply to your comment rolls in and it’s simply:
Whether you’re studying for the GRE (Graduate Record Examinations test) or just want to improve your vocabulary, these are ten words you should learn how to use right now.
Replete: filled or well-supplied with something. Our cupboard is replete with canned soup.
Harbinger: A person or thing that foreshadows or foretells the coming of someone or something. Some people believe that crows are harbingers of death.
When using multiple verbs in a clause, it’s important to keep them in the same tense. For example: I went to the store, buy an apple, and ate it on the way home. ‘Went’ and ‘ate’ are both in past tense, but ‘buy’ is in present tense.
To fix this sentence, use ‘bought,’ which is the past tense of ‘buy.’ I went to the store, bought an apple, and ate it on the way home.
The simple past is a verb tense that is used to talk about things that happened or existed before now. Imagine someone asks what your brother Wolfgang did while he was in town last weekend.
The simple past tense shows that you are talking about something that has already happened. Unlike the past continuous tense, which is used to talk about past events that happened over a period of time, the simple past tense emphasizes that the action is finished.
According to History.com, a woman named Anna Jarvis created the American version of the holiday in 1908, prompted by the passing of her own mother. It became an official holiday in 1914. Jarvis later denounced the commercialization of the holiday and tried to have it removed from the calendar!
Here are some fascinating facts about Mother’s Day:
A few years ago, I had to come to terms with my burgeoning habit of browsing housing rental ads on Craigslist for places in the Pacific Northwest. I’d look at the listings and wonder, What would it be like to live in Washington? Wondering soon turned to obsession, and obsession spurred research. Before I knew it, I’d made a decision—I was going to leave my ancestral home in the upper Midwest and trek two thousand miles to live near the shores of Puget Sound.
Sentence fragments are snippets of words that don’t quite add up to a complete thought. There are several common types of sentence fragments, including:
Let’s take a look at each of them.
To understand sentence fragments, we must first know what a complete sentence looks like. In its most basic form, a sentence consists of a subject (a noun) and a predicate (a verb).
Imagine you need to write down a phone number, but you don’t have any paper handy. What would you use? Some scribble on a receipt, a napkin, or even their hands. Others repeat the number mentally until they locate a sheet of paper. It’s true; necessity is the mother of invention. In other words, people often generate creative solutions if they need something not readily available.
Whether you write essays, business materials, fiction, articles, letters, or even just notes in your journal, your writing will be at its best if you stay focused on your purpose. While there are many reasons why you might be putting pen to paper or tapping away on the keyboard, there are really only four main types of writing: expository, descriptive, persuasive, and narrative.
