GrammarPhile Blog

(Most People Couldn’t)

If you took part 2 of our most recent spelling quiz and were embarrassed by your score or confused by the answers, this post is for you.

Keep reading for a full breakdown of the right answers, the wrong answers, and definitions/examples of both.

A Breakdown of the Spelling Quiz That Tripped Up a Bunch of Smart Professionals

1. The sad testimony will definitely test one’s medal/metal/mettle/meddle.

❌ WRONG – medal: What Olympians get if they’re in the top three — bronze, silver, and gold. Medals are sometimes made of metal (see directly below).

❌ WRONG – metal: Steel, copper, nickel, bronze, iron, gold, and silver, for example.

❌ WRONG – meddle: This is what the town gossip or your nosy family does. “Meddle” in your affairs. Get all up in your business. Butt in. Ugh!

✔️  RIGHT – mettle: This is the stuff you’re made of: your stamina, grit, temperament, and strength of spirit. Warriors prove their mettle in battle. Parents of toddlers prove their mettle at bed and meal times.

(Most People Can't)

This is part 2 of a spelling quiz we recently posed to a group of highly educated legal marketing and business development professionals at an annual conference. They were sure they could ace our questions—communication is the foundation of their businesses.

Guess what?

Most of them made mistakes! In fact, many of them made the same mistakes! They were gobsmacked.

The level of hate some people have for Microsoft Word is alarming and hilarious. But the amount of vitriol people spew over Google Docs is about the same.

Instead of wading into that cesspool of disgruntledness, we’ll stick with answering the burning question: Is Google Docs better than Microsoft Word?

The answer is, as with many things, “it depends.”

Let’s cover the most important (and most argued over) features of Google Docs and Microsoft Word: accessibility, collaboration, UI (user interface), price, compatibility, functionality, and customization.

Google Docs vs. Microsoft Word by Feature

1. Accessibility

Google Docs: You can operate Google Docs on any computer or browser, except for BlackBerry phones (condolences to that one person still using a BlackBerry, wherever you are). Since it’s cloud-based, you won’t need to stick with a specific device to access in-process documents. But if you don’t have access to the internet, you’re out of luck (though there are offline features). However, you won’t ever lose a document or the changes you made (saved in real time) unless an asteroid hits Earth.

Microsoft Word: You’ll need to be working from a computer with a Windows or Mac operating system. While it’s great to be able to access your documents from a single place regardless of internet access, that also means you have to have that same device to work with, every time. You run the risk of losing documents if your hard drive goes wonky or your OS goes on strike and a file isn’t recoverable. Enabling auto save can compensate for this risk.

Our Take: Google Docs wins on accessibility unless the zombie apocalypse happens.

At ProofreadNOW.com, we give away our secrets. All the juicy goodness of how to be a great writer — expressing exactly what you want to in powerful, precise, as-close-to-perfect-as-possible language.

We also earn our keep with these secrets, by proofreading and copyediting business documents 24 hours a day, 365 days a year (and one extra in leap years).

On the surface, that sounds like a pretty dumb business model. Giving away our service, in a sense.

Aren’t we undermining profits? Putting ourselves out of work? Making ourselves obsolete, especially in the age of generative AI?

Not likely. Even the best writers use editors. In fact, the best writers are often the best writers because they understand that writing is an incremental, innately human, nuanced process of refinement, one that, if you’re serious about it, could last forever. But nobody has forever. So we’re bound to be around for a long time, helping time-strapped businesses that have a lot to say.

Still, our belief in our longevity doesn’t explain our primary motivations for helping people become better writers.

                    (Most People Couldn’t)

If you took our most recent spelling quiz and were disappointed with your score or confused by the answers, this post is for you.

Keep reading for a full breakdown of the right answers, the wrong answers, and definitions of both.

A Breakdown of The Spelling Quiz That Tripped Up a Bunch of Smart Professionals

1. The facts involved a study in plain/plane geometry.

❌ WRONG – plain: Not decorated, obvious, boring, or ordinary. (We won’t argue that geometry is boring to some people, but that’s not the intended meaning here.)

✔️  RIGHT – plane: “A flat level or surface” in this case. In other words: the study of 2D shapes.

2. He spoke pidgin/pigeon English when he had to.

❌ WRONG – pigeon: It’s feathered, gray-ish, and poops all over buildings and park benches. But pigeons don’t speak an official language.

✔️  RIGHT – pidgin: A simplified speech that allows people speaking different languages to communicate. The word originated from a Chinese corruption of the word “business.” A “creole” is a complete pidgin language, such as Haitian Creole, Gullah, and Jamaican Creole, passed down to the children of adult pidgin speakers, thereby becoming a native language.

Meanings and Examples

Read this 5-minute grammar lesson and never doubt your spelling or use of “they’re,” “their,” or “there” again.

They’re: Meaning and Examples

If you understand the basics, you’re less likely to forget information. The most basic information about “they’re” is that it’s a contraction. When you see an apostrophe (this little fella: ’) between multiple letters in nonplural words, it’s a big, red, bouncy alert: Two or more words have been smushed together, and at least one letter/sound has been left out. These combo words are called contractions.

Contraction examples:

• they’ll: they will
• can’t: can not
• wouldn’t: would not
• she’s: she is
• isn’t: is not
• must’ve: must have
• didn’t: didn’t
• aren’t: are not
• ’twasn’t: it was not (don’t use this unless you’re trying to write 18^th-century-vibes poetry)

Apostrophes are also used to show possession (ownership) and for clarity in a few oddball plurals.

What Is Track Changes?

We will assume you have been living under a rock if you’re asking this question. But we respect all kinds of homes and life choices (in fact, given the current state of the world, we salute you), so we wanted to make sure we covered the basics.

Track Changes is a built-in Microsoft Word feature that lets you track any edits made to a document. Hence the surprisingly witty name.

The Benefits of Using Track Changes

This little baby could save your life. It probably won’t, but the power of editing should never be underestimated. If you’re not sure when to use Track Changes, here are some great use cases:

• When you’re working on multiple iterations of a document over a long period of time.
• When your boss wants to see that you incorporated their edits in the spiffy report you wrote.
• When you’re working on a document with way too many other collaborators, and you need a way to track who did what and where.
• When you don’t trust one of your collaborators, so you want a way to approve everybody’s edits but theirs.
• When you’re working on a document with a teammate in real time and you need to keep edits straight without losing content or your mind.
• When you’re working on a document with a teammate in a staggered approach and you want to be sure they agree with the edits you made.
• Whenever you’re in a content writing approval process and send a document out for feedback.
• When you want to feel less lonely, so you create an alter ego named Janet and have “her” edit your document (you reject most of her changes; what does she know?).

Switch Your Focus

 Do you hate self-obsessed social media influencers? What’s your tolerance level for vanity post after poorly cloaked vanity post?

I will guess “lots” and “very low” for your answers.

In that case, I have some bad news. A lot of B2B writing comes across in a similar, self-serving fashion.

“Would you just look at us? We’re amazing! Listen to this list of all the reasons we’re great! Isn’t our platform the sexiest thing? We’re also smarter than everybody else.”

This approach often stems from the best intentions — explaining why your product or service is worth buying; convincing your core audience that you’re legitimate and experienced; providing concrete evidence to support your offer.

But if you wouldn’t abide an acquaintance droning on and on about their accolades (unless you specifically asked), you can understand why this sort of writing doesn’t sit well with a lot of people (i.e., ticks them off).

It’s not just that it’s often boring and makes readers angry they can’t get those 35 seconds of their lives back, though that’s true. It’s not because the writing is usually rife with jargon or other generic-cream-puff words, though that’s a problem as well. It ain’t even because it’s sometimes so stuffy and professional you could use it to iron a funeral suit (the funeral for your audience’s attention).

Focus on the Benefits of the Benefits

 Nine-and-a-half years ago, I made a batch of crêpes. More accurately, I attempted to make a batch of crêpes (don’t you just love that little caret symbol — circumflex accent — above the “e”? I know I don’t need to use it, but I’m writing this on a morose Monday and wanted the encouragement).

Crêpes are delicate things. You can’t slap them in the pan like bacon. They mustn’t be jostled. The pan must have a precise coating of butter or oil, so they don’t stick or become greasy, thin pancakes. They require gentle folding and lifting onto a plate. Frankly, I recommend you only speak in murmurs while you’re eating crêpes and apologize to them beforehand for the offense of being chewed.

I am the human opposite of a crêpe — a graceless, dirt-covered stampede on a white carpet — so you understand the peril of this story from the start. I was also eight months pregnant with my second child. My days consisted of throwing up, not sleeping, more throwing up, feeling tired, attempting to care for a household and another child, and struggling to stand in the shower. Each torturous day melted into the next. I felt like a gelatinous lump of uselessness.

So I decided to make crêpes. It was, in a word, disastrous. I improperly oiled the pan. I set the heat too high. I turned the crêpe too quickly. Three sorry attempts in, I lost it. I scraped the disgusting flop of a fake-pancake out of the pan and threw it on the kitchen floor, then burst into tears.

Be Unprofessional

There was a time when women couldn’t show their ankles in public. When people used the term “limbs” instead of “legs” for propriety’s sake. When men had to grow their beards out to cover their manly thighs (limbs, my apologies), lest the ladies lost their cool.

I made the last one up, but the point stands. We’ve left those and many other goofy social mores behind. Most people would say we’re the better for it. But we’ve replaced them with silly ones of today — including in B2B writing.

This is the era of blandness. Of same-old, same-old. Of robotic voices and stilted, highfalutin language.

Why Professionalism Has Ruined B2B Writing

Why does this abnormally bad norm persist? Because we’re consumed with the desire to sound “professional.” We equate “professional” with a limited slice of language. We believe the foremost way to establish ourselves as experts, as believable, as the “real deal,” is to write like a lawyer with an alphabet behind her name.

In the middle of this desperation to be taken seriously, we lose sight of the bondage our “professionalism” creates. It is the epitome of playing it safe: no personality, no memorable, distinguishable voice, and no relatability.