Guest post from Mignon Fogarty
The 452nd anniversary of William Shakespeare’s birth is coming. He is not only known as a timeless playwright, but also as a prolific inventor of words. Although modern researchers have found that some words originally attributed to him, such as puke, have earlier sources, there are still many that hold up today as Shakespeare’s creations according to the Oxford English Dictionary:
Do you need a hand? These fourteen career development books will show you how you can move your job goals in the right direction.
People who get stuff done share at least seven common traits. In The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen R. Covey, you’ll learn what the seven practices are and how you can acquire them.
Though ruling a nation might not be your career goal, you can glean a lot of wisdom from The Emperor’s Handbook, a translation of Meditations written by Marcus Aurelius, which includes some “unique features for contemporary readers.”
To anyone who’s been following us on social media, it should come as no surprise that Grammarly loves puns—especially clever ones that we’ve never seen before. With Halloween just around the corner, we thought we would pull together some of the most creative ideas to spark your imagination.
It’s a good thing puns aren’t considered treason! Follow this helpful tutorial to cover yourself in Pop Art makeup, then draw or hot-glue quarters to an old T-shirt.
Maybe you’re in it for writing advice. Or maybe you want to know what your favorite writers do in their actual lives. Maybe you just need a distraction and want to look at cats, food, or cartoons, but also want feel a little intellectual while you’re at it.
Don’t fret. Everyone looks at social media for “inspiration,” whether they realize it or not.
Whatever your motivation may be, we’ve gathered twenty of the best Instagram accounts operated by professional writers (or about or related to professional writing).
With the arrival of the anniversary of the initial release of the first Star Wars movie, we at Grammarly started to reflect on what makes the films so great. Being language lovers and word nerds at heart, we are particularly fascinated and charmed by the grammar of the great Jedi master, Yoda. To celebrate our love of Star Wars, we dissected a few classic Yoda-style quotes in order to better understand the patterns that #yodify the English language.
Complex sentences are sentences that have two clauses. There can be two independent clauses (each having a subject and predicate), or an independent clause and dependent clause (missing a subject or predicate). Whether a comma is used between them depends on the types and positions of the clauses.
An independent clause is a clause that can stand on its own as a sentence.
As technology improves, it’s faster and easier than ever to get words from brain to screen. We’ve progressed from dipping utensils in ink to using speech recognition software to dictate an entire Slate article. Here’s the evolution of writing tools at a glance.
Writers initially used reed or bamboo pens, feather quills, ink brushes, or dip pens, all of which were dipped into ink and then placed on papyrus or paper.
When we’re online putting our thoughts and ideas into writing, grammar can mean the difference between getting our point across and having it misconstrued. If there’s one place where clear communication is a must, it’s the world of politics.
Ready or not, presidential debate season has begun. Armed with our grammar algorithms and research team, we headed to each 2016 presidential candidate’s official Facebook page to take a lighthearted look at how well their supporters write.
There’s a gentle balancing act in calibrating a mellow playlist, say for the Sunday evening before a hectic workweek.
Cue up too many happy songs and the result can feel saccharine. Too many sad ones will just leave you depressed. Jams that get you moving are fun when you’re going out, but tonight you’re staying in. Then again, you need something with a pulse: you’re not winding down for bed quite yet.
Verb conjugation refers to how a verb changes to show a different person, tense, number or mood.
In English, we have six different persons: first person singular (I), second person singular (you), third person singular (he/she/it/one), first person plural (we), second person plural (you), and third person plural (they). We must conjugate a verb for each person.
Here are two simple truths—writing skills can be taught, and all good writers are also readers. What better way to accomplish two things at once than to read books about writing?
Back in the late ’90s, I owned and managed one of the first websites to offer online workshops especially for writers. Nearly every week, some publishing house would send me one of their latest books for writers hoping for a glowing review.
Bad habits are often a real sticking point in personal development. But what if we told you that you may have some distracting habits you might not even realize are holding you back?
Here are nine tough habits that can limit your productivity, and some ideas for moving past them.
Nowadays, it’s increasingly acceptable to dress informally at work, and most of us call our managers by their first names.
Mixing them up is always a mistake, but of and off are commonly confused nonetheless.
Whether you’re a decisive taskmaster or someone who struggles to choose what to eat for breakfast, you will eventually have a decision that stumps you. Sometimes, these are big life choices like taking that job, choosing that partner, or moving to that new city. Other times, seemingly small decisions like which font you should use in your presentation can trip you up.
All of a sudden is an idiom that is a more poetic way of saying “suddenly.” A common mistake to make, especially for English learners, is to write all the sudden or all of the sudden. On a sudden is a historic but outmoded variant. Currently, all of a sudden is the only accepted usage.
Although all of the sudden has been used in centuries past, all of a sudden is the phrasing that eventually stuck.
Today marks the fifty-first anniversary of International Literacy Day, a holiday that recognizes literacy as “a foundation to build a more sustainable future for all.” Started in 1966 by UNESCO as a day to recognize literacy programs worldwide, this day continues to remind world leaders that universal literacy has not been accomplished. Far from it, in fact: in 2013, the adult (25 or older) literacy rate was 85 percent worldwide, and the population of illiterate adults was 757 million.
You just got an email from Susie in accounting asking you to bring three dozen of your famous cupcakes for Dave the office manager’s retirement party. Which, by the way, is tomorrow. Susie signed her email:
Thank you in advance,
Susie
Your reaction to that sign-off will probably depend on the tone and content of Susie’s email. If she politely apologized for the short notice and begged you to please consider whipping up what has become an office favorite (because, really, who doesn’t like cupcakes?), you might get busy baking after work.
A hyphen (-) is a punctuation mark that’s used to join words or parts of words. It’s not interchangeable with other types of dashes.
A dash is longer than a hyphen and is commonly used to indicate a range or a pause. The most common types of dashes are the en dash (–) and the em dash (—).
Some compound words, such as self-restraint are hyphenated.
