GrammarPhile Blog

Writer’s block and looming deadlines can make work challenging for any writer regardless of what they’re writing. But disorganization and randomness can make completing writing tasks and projects seem almost impossible at times.

As a writer, your job is to make your writing enjoyable and easy to understand. That applies to everything you write, whether it’s a manual, a text book, a report, or any other type of technical writing that isn’t typically known as being “enjoyable” reading material.

Writers will often use industry jargon to make their writing easier to read and understand. But—as every reader knows—it doesn’t always work. In some cases, using industry jargon provides clarity. But in other cases, industry jargon will leave readers bewildered, frustrated, or bored.

So, how do you know when and how to use industry jargon so that your writing is clearer and easier to read? Continue reading to learn more.

Not every writer can aspire to be like Shakespeare — side-stepping grammar rules and conventions in clever ways, misspelling words that end up in the literature canon, and sometimes even making up rules as they go along. Nor should they.

Marketers, journalists, novelists, and business writers alike put their writing careers on the line when they make egregious grammar, spelling, and punctuation errors, with their credibility and professional standing often being called into question. But mistakes happen, especially grammatical ones. And although writers try to avoid mistakes at all costs, especially in marketing copy and business writing, some of these mistakes fall through the cracks and are printed for the whole world to see. Some of these mistakes are funny, some of them roll off the tongue and incorporate themselves into everyday vernacular, and some of them are downright offensive.

What we know as Christmas today is one of the most popular holidays celebrated around the world, when millions of people participate in festivities and traditions. Whether you call it Christmas or something else, the popular winter holiday is a byproduct of secular and religious traditions that have evolved over the past several hundred years. It’s a time for family and friends to come together, decorate their homes, exchange gifts, feast, be merry, and extend their generosity to their neighbors and greater communities. Here are some notable holiday stories from around the world and their origins. You’ll notice that all their origins lie in an explanation for gift-giving.

Identifying and understanding prefixes and suffixes of a word on their own may not be that difficult, but knowing where to put hyphens when you’re trying to write a uniquely arranged word or compound word isn’t always easy. Luckily, there are some general rules of thumb and tips to remember that everyone can follow to ensure that others at least understand what you’re trying to communicate. But first, let’s quickly recap what prefixes and suffixes are, and how they function.

Prefixes

Prefixes are added to the beginning of an existing word to create a new word with a different meaning. Prefixes don’t always have hyphens when they’re used, but they do change the grammatical function of a word in a sentence.

It’s not uncommon to see “i.e.” used where “e.g.” should be used, and vice versa. In fact, it’s one of the most common mistakes writers make. Why? How could such simple abbreviations perplex even the most experienced of writers at times? It could have something to do with the fact that both abbreviations are derived from Latin words.

Continue reading to learn more about these sometimes-puzzling abbreviations.

An idiom is a style or form of artistic expression that is characteristic of an individual, a period or a movement, or a medium or instrument. Another way to define idiom is as an expression in the usage of a language that is peculiar to itself either grammatically (as no, it wasn’t me) or in having a meaning that cannot be derived from the conjoined meanings of its elements (as Monday week for “the Monday a week after next Monday”). Idioms are often phrases we utter without even thinking about them.

It’s highly unlikely your boss or coworker will ever ask you to identify the subject or verb in a sentence you wrote in an email. And colleagues will never ask you to verify that all pronouns in a sentence you wrote are agreeing with their proper antecedents. Well, at least not in most professions. This isn’t surprising, but makes it easy to see why we forget about what clauses are and why their structures are important in our daily writing.

Is there anything you need to do, hold, or see before you sit down to write, every time you write? If so, you might already have some sort of writing ritual.

From renting a hotel room to chewing on coffee beans, the famous authors on this list had some unique writing rituals. Some of them are a bit more eccentric than others. But after you parse through them, you’ll see why you might want to consider starting a writing ritual too, if you don’t already have one.

Writing a manual or instruction booklet for new team members or customers is difficult. You want them to get acquainted with your product or service in a positive way, while providing them with valuable information. But you don’t want to bore them or scare them away with complicated details.