Do you have any idea how many hours a week you spend reading and writing emails? Well, according to a recent study by McKinsey & Company, it could easily be 11 hours for the average worker—and that doesn’t even count personal time! Just let that sink in for a moment…
Well, now you can take matters into your own hands (and possibly retain some sanity) with these time-saving and feature-packed third-party apps.
Adjectives are words that describe the qualities or states of being of nouns: enormous, doglike, silly, yellow, fun, fast. They can also describe the quantity of nouns: many, few, millions, eleven.
Most students learn that adjectives are words which modify (describe) a noun. Adjectives do not modify verbs or adverbs or other adjectives.
Is this your first lesson on ordinal numbers? Maybe the second? Or, perhaps it’s the third?
To put it simply, ordinal numbers are used to put things in order. This can be anything from an address to the position a runner finishes in a race.
Ordinal numbers indicate position or order in relation to other numbers.
In the United States and Canada, the first Monday of September is the day we call Labor Day. That holiday means different things to different people. For kids, it’s the start of a new school year. For most people, it signals the end of summer. It’s also (supposedly) a cutoff date for wearing white clothes, even though the practice of not wearing white clothes in the fall predates the establishment of Labor Day as a federal holiday.
Should you use a comma before or? The answer depends on how you are using or. Always place a comma before or when it begins an independent clause, but if it begins a dependent clause, don’t. In a series (or list) of three or more items, you can use a comma before or, but this is a preference, not a rule.
People often get muddled about whether to place a comma before conjunctions like and, so, because, and or.
You’re probably not as good at starting conversations as you think you are.
And if, after reading that statement, you’re thinking Nuh-uh! I rock at starting conversations! there’s an even better chance you need the advice in this article.
Last night, I went to a blues concert with my friend. After the concert, we bumped into two of his acquaintances. The first, Mindy, approached us and said hello, but then stood there passively waiting for someone else to say something.
Imagine you were trying to get a job fifty years ago. You would find a job listing in a newspaper, set up an in-person interview, and walk in with your resume to introduce yourself to the company.
Today, LinkedIn has taken the place of the newspaper, your resume, and even that first meeting. Your presence on LinkedIn matters. In fact, 87 percent of recruiters will vet your candidacy by visiting your LinkedIn profile, according to data from Jobvite.
The author James Michener said, “I’m not a very good writer, but I’m an excellent rewriter.” If you’re an aspiring author or someone striving for clarity in your professional or academic writing, you appreciate the methodical march of the rewriting process. Each word in a sentence has a job; cut those that do nothing. These six tips will help you achieve clear and concise writing.
Do your bloated emails need a diet? If an email is too wordy, the recipient may not be inclined to read it carefully. Make your emails brief, clean, and effective by eliminating these unnecessary phrases.
When you type an email, the receiver can’t see your twinkling eyes and impish grin. Certain words, such as “actually,” can seem sarcastic, condescending, or even impolite.
Working from home seems ideal. No need to get dressed and polished for the day, no commute, and no distracting coworkers to face—what’s not to like? But working remotely isn’t as easy as it looks.
The undisputed champion of small talk topics revolves around one question: What do you do for a living? I tell people I’m a writer and that, although I’m technically a freelancer, I have a steady gig with Grammarly. (That insight sometimes evokes the exclamation “Oh em gee!
It’s National Novel Writing Month, and that means that writers around the world are working hard to write an entire book during the month of November. Congratulations to everyone who has taken on this challenge—it’s no easy task!
To help you with your masterpiece-in-progress, we compiled a list of the most frequent writing mistakes we encountered as we edited our 2014 NaNoWriMo project, a crowdsourced novel called Frozen by Fire.
“We live in a content-saturated world,” your editor shrugs. Your coffee has suddenly gone cold, and so has the conversation.
What she means is that the commodity you’re offering – your writing – is hard to sell, because the web has made written words more readily available than ever. Honing a voice that stands out can feel like an impossible gig to take to the bank – which is where, if you’d listened to your parents, you’d be working, instead of haunting cafes and coffee shops with your laptop, trying to grind out a living as a writer.
You’ve been asked to write a reference letter—nice! Being asked likely means you’ve come far enough in your career that your endorsement is meaningful. At the very least, it means that someone you know personally values your opinion of them.
Reference letters are a staple of modern communications. At some time or another, almost everybody needs one for things like job applications, internships, college or grad school applications, or even volunteer opportunities.
Is life getting in the way of your book habit? The more hectic your schedule, the harder it is to find time to indulge in your favorite work of fiction.
Fortunately there’s a new invention called a “podcast” that may just satisfy your craving for juicy storytelling. As an audio-only experience, podcasts can be enjoyed at times when it’s simply not practical to read a book—like while driving a car during your morning commute, standing squished against strangers in a bumpy train car, or working at your computer.
We’ve all heard it before: The movie was great, but the book was so much better. No matter which version of the story you prefer, the great thing about book-to-movie adaptations is that you can enjoy the story twice: once on the page and again on the screen. Here are three young adult series we recommend you read before you see their on-screen counterparts:
In the film version of Divergent, the first book in the trilogy by Veronica Roth, Shailene Woodley does a wonderful job of conveying protagonist Tris Prior’s determination and bravery as the world around her changes into something she barely recognizes.
At any given time, everyone is trying to break at least one bad habit.
Bad habits sap our confidence, time, and energy and keep us from living our healthiest, most productive, and happiest lives.
Whether you want to eat better, improve teamwork skills, quit smoking, listen more, or something else, we’ve compiled some best practices that will have you breaking bad habits for good.
The phrase such as requires a comma in front of it only if it’s part of a nonrestrictive clause.
Here’s an example of such as used correctly with a comma in a sentence:
The phrase such as pine and spruce is nonrestrictive, so you need a comma.
On the morning of September 14, 1814, the sun rose to reveal a surprising sight to Francis Scott Key.
Just a month after the British had burned the White House during the height of the War of 1812, Key was aboard a British vessel negotiating the release of a friend who was being held prisoner. During Key’s time aboard the vessel, the British commenced an attack on Fort McHenry and the pair was not allowed to leave.
Few punctuation marks have as exciting a name as the interrobang. But what does the interrobang do?
The interrobang combines the question mark (?) and the exclamation point (!) into a single punctuation mark. It conveys a question asked in an excited way. For example:
