GrammarPhile Blog

Emojis started to gain popularity after people began to use a colon and a comma to indicate a smiley face :) or a sad face :( in their text messages and emails (a.k.a. emoticons). Then after smartphones came along, the world of emojis began to expand far beyond the smiley and sad face emoticons. Now we have emojis for the “wow” face, the “laughing so hard I’m crying” face, as well as animal emojis, plant emojis, holiday emojis… and the list goes on and on.

Some individuals will send emojis in every piece of communication they type, whether they’re for work or not. They would probably write entire paragraphs using emojis if they could. Other individuals are convinced that emojis are sending us down a path that leads directly to the complete destruction of the English language as we know it.

So, where do emojis belong in writing? Are there any rules you need to know?

Using proper grammar to express emotions has fallen to the wayside in a world where individuals have become reliant on using things like emojis (😲 😃), italics, bolded font, and CAPITALIZED WORDS to express their emotions when they write. But that doesn’t mean grammar has suddenly become inept in this arena. On the contrary, there are many ways you can use grammar to express your emotions effectively to connect with your audience.

Mood

It shouldn’t be too surprising that you can use the mood of your verbs to connect emotionally with your audience. The mood of a verb shows a writer’s attitude toward what he or she is writing. There are three moods in the English language.

A bias is a strong inclination of the mind or a preconceived opinion about something or someone. Most of the time, biases occur on a subconscious level and people aren’t even aware they have them. But everyone still holds biases; it’s simply human nature to be partial toward certain things and not toward others, for a multitude of reasons. A lot of biases can be good, like being partial toward initiatives that help children from low-income families. Some can be neutral, like preferring to read New York Times bestsellers instead of The Wall Street Journal. And some biases are generally considered negative, like racial, age, cultural, and gender biases.

Take This Quiz to Find Out

Verb conjugation refers to how a verb changes from one form to another in order to show a different person, tense, number, aspect, or mood. Verbs are critical to understanding what and when something is happening to or via a subject or object in a sentence. It’s vital to know what’s happening in a sentence. And it’s just as important to know who is doing what when we’re communicating, as well as when they’re doing it, and how they’re doing it. Otherwise, we wouldn’t be able to communicate with one another very efficiently.

Writing an impressive social media profile isn’t as easy as it seems, especially in an online world where personal and professional lines are becoming more and more blurred. Knowing how to stand out to the right individuals on social media requires a certain amount of finesse. But fortunately, getting your profile noticed isn’t as arbitrary as it seems at first either. If you want to have a notable social media profile that stands out, here are some things you’ll want to do as you’re writing it.

Consider Your Target Audience 

Facebook has over two billion users each month. Twitter has over three hundred million users. And LinkedIn has about five hundred million monthly users. With numbers like these, it can seem daunting to try and write a profile that would appeal to so many people. The good news is, you shouldn’t even try to do that. Instead, consider your target audience on each platform and who you want to appeal to the most, and then write information about yourself that is relevant to them.

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.

Without hesitation, most people trust their dictionary as the true authority on language. When there’s a debate about the validity of a word or phrase, or you want to know how it’s spelled, you look it up in the dictionary without questioning it.

Essentially all words are made up in one way or another, but how do they get added to the dictionary? Is there someone who gets the final say in determining whether a word can and should be included in the dictionary? And is there a set process for adding words to the dictionary? The answer to both latter questions is: yes.

Punctuation is used in writing to establish clarity, tone, meaning, and structure. Consider this sentence without punctuation, and you’ll quickly remember why we need to use it.

maybe you dont always want to use commas periods colons etc when youre writing sentences when I am in a rush tired cold lazy or angry I sometimes leave out punctuation marks grammar is unnecessary anyway I can write without it and wont ever need it my aunt Jane once said she wasnt very good with writing and I never understood a word she wrote to me I think ill just learn enough punctuation not too much enough to write to Aunt Jane needs some help

Using punctuation properly helps your readers understand the message you’re attempting to convey, and ensures they don’t read one thing while you intend another. Punctuation promotes effective communication, which is why it’s so important in marketing and business writing.

Do you think you’re already a pro with punctuation? Test your punctuation knowledge with our quiz and get your answers on-screen when you complete the quiz. After you complete the quiz, the correct answers will be highlighted.

You probably know more word roots in English than you think, simply because you speak and write in the language every day. Once you glance at the list below, it will all start to make sense, and many of the word roots will be easy to remember because they’re so familiar.

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.