Creative People Will Want to Know These 4 Tips from JJ Abrams

If you’re a fan of film, television, or lens flare, you’ve probably heard of JJ Abrams. He’s the Emmy award–winning writer-director-producer who brought us Alias, Felicity, Lost, Super 8, Mission Impossible III, Cloverfield, and 10 Cloverfield Lane.

Oh yeah . . . and he rebooted two of the greatest sci-fi franchises of all time, Star Trek and Star Wars. No big deal, y’all!

If you’re ready to make your own creative mark on the world, listen up—JJ’s got some advice for you. Here are four tips on creativity from the “Spielberg” of this generation.

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1Emotional Connection Is Everything

I love larger than life, kind of spectacle moments. But what’s important to me is that the characters are at the center, that emotionally you know where you are, and you’re tracking characters that are taking you through those spectacular moments. And that to me is the most important thing, that balance of the intimacy with the spectacle and the sort of hyper reality.

JJ knows the bottom line: your audience has to care. If they’re not emotionally invested in what’s going on, it doesn’t matter how shiny or bombastic you make something. That climactic moment you worked so hard to create will feel hollow if it’s lacking an emotional core for your audience to connect with.

2Be Open to the Best Idea

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If you’re not open to the best idea, whether it’s a scene for a movie, an episode or a story arc for a series, you’re closed to the possibilities . . . to look at it like a job or a project that is delineated by the expectations, to me limits the possibilities. Some of the great inventions were not intended.

JJ likens the creative process to “driving in the fog.” You have “the big idea” of where a project is going, but you’re also giving your work the space to organically evolve.

The Lost character Ben Linus was originally written for a single episode. When actor Michael Emerson showed up (and was brilliant), the Lost creators realized the character could be far more important to the story, and Ben Linus became a central character.

Are you willing to scrap your original idea for the best idea?

3Your Voice Matters

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. . . what I kind of learned early on is that your voice is as important as anyone else’s. You may not always be right and you shouldn’t be cocky about it but I felt that I needed to learn that the ideas that I had were as good as anyone else’s ideas. . . . That thing that you feel, if you really feel it, other people do too.

We all struggle with imposter syndrome and second-guessing ourselves. But if you’ve got an idea that excites you, don’t write it off. It may not always pan out, but if you don’t give yourself a chance, who will?

4The Only Thing Stopping You Is You

You want to write? Make movies? JJ’s advice is to go do it!

I used to say . . . to someone who wants to write, “Go! Write! Do your thing.” It’s free, you don’t need permission. But now I can say, “Go make your movie!” There’s nothing stopping you from going out there and getting the technology. You can lease, rent, buy stuff off the shelf that is . . . just as good, as the stuff that’s being used by the . . . “legit people.”

. . . the technology has been democratized, everyone has access to the ability to be a filmmaker, and if you want to do it, the only thing stopping you is you.

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The Early Bird Catches the Word: Analysis Shows We Write Better by Day

“Early to bed and early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise.”

So says the old proverb, often attributed to Benjamin Franklin. Of course, Franklin lived in a time before electric lighting, when staying up late meant burning the midnight oil and people had good reason to be productive during the daylight hours. Even so, at least when it comes to writing well, he may have been onto something.

Centuries later, with our homes illuminated by not only electric lights but also the glow of TVs, computers, and handheld devices, many of us have come to identify as either early birds or night owls. Early birds turn in at a reasonable hour so they can wake refreshed first thing in the morning. Night owls stay active long past dark and tend to sleep later.

The Grammarly team wanted to know whether time of day had a measurable effect on the quality of a person’s writing, so we crunched over one billion words proofread by our app in search of answers. Ben Franklin might have been pleased with our discoveries. We learned that, although we can’t know the status of their health, wealth, or wisdom, Grammarly users do their best online writing early in the day. Have a look at our infographic to see how early birds and night owls fared when blogging, writing emails, and using social media.

To share this infographic on your website or blog, copy-paste the embed code into your editor.

Early birds make fewer writing mistakes

Our research showed that early birds, defined by our study as those who write online between the hours of 4 a.m. and 8 a.m. in their local time zones, made fewer writing mistakes overall with an average of 13.8 mistakes per 100 words. Night owls, those writing the evening hours away between 10 p.m. and 2 a.m., were more error-prone with 17 mistakes per 100 words.

When it comes to platforms, writers tend to make fewer spelling, grammar, and punctuation blunders when writing blog posts than they do in either email or social media. There’s also a prime time for blogging if you want to write more accurately—between 1:00 p.m. and 5:00 p.m. During that period, blog writers made just 3.7 errors per 100 words.

Writers made more mistakes in emails than in blog posts (11.8 per 100 words for the early birds, and 14.3 for the night owls.) The next time you’re firing off an electronic missive, pay attention to spelling. Spelling errors accounted for over half of the mistakes made in email communiques.

It’s probably no surprise that people make the most grammatical gaffes in social media, where communication tends to be more casual and writers often use slang and, particularly on Twitter, abbreviations or text-speak. On average, writers make three times as many mistakes in social media posts as they do in email.

In each online writing category, early birds wrote with more accuracy than their night owl counterparts. Night owls who want to hone their abilities should consider learning the differences between commonly confused words. In fact, night owls confuse words 66% more often than early birds. If homonyms and other mistakes trip you up, here are a few articles to help you sharpen your skills:

• Apostrophe Mistakes (e.g. let’s vs. lets)
• Too vs. To
• Everyday vs. Every Day
• Than vs. Then
• Of vs. Off

Night owls have smarts

The circadian rhythm is the biological cycle of activity and rest that nearly all animals have. In the time before electricity and technology, we human animals were primarily diurnal—active during the daylight hours, when we could see well and heed the proverb to make hay while the sun shines. But as we developed technology that allowed us to be active and even productive into the hours after dark, some of us adopted the tendency to stay up late, becoming night owls.

In a 2009 study, evolutionary psychologist Satoshi Kanazawa hypothesized that humans who developed a tendency to be nocturnal were adopting evolutionarily novel values. As technology advanced, night owls advanced to do something their ancestors hadn’t—stay up later and wake later. That evolutionary step, Kanazawa believed, could predict that people with higher IQs were more likely to be nocturnal than those with lower IQs. Kanazawa’s research, using a large sample of young Americans, bore out this hypothesis—children with higher IQs grew to be more nocturnal adults.

Although night owls may need to be more careful while writing during the evening hours, science shows that innate intelligence probably isn’t a factor.

Good writing can happen at any time

When do you do your best writing? Whether or not you’ve noticed a tendency to be sharper by day or night, one thing’s for certain—good writing depends on proofreading. Take a moment to double-check your blog posts, emails, and social media shares so your writing will shine at every time of day.

Commonly Confused Word Pairs

By Laura Wallis for The Stir by CafeMom

Words that sound alike but have different meanings and spellings are called homophones, and especially for kids who are just learning to spell, they can cause trouble every time. There are some rules to help budding writers remember the trickiest homophones, but in many cases it’s just a matter of memory. There, their . . . they’ll get them in time.

Its and It’s

This pair is tough because apostrophes are often used to denote possessives—but not in this case. It’s is short for it is. So, “The dog wags its tail because it’s time to eat.”

Your and You’re

Kids (and even some grown-ups) get caught on this pair a lot, and it drives grammar-loving parents nuts. Your is possessive, while you’re is short for you are. “You have to know your rights,” but “I know, you’re right.”

There, they’re, their

The first of this trio is the easiest to remember: Just start here, then go over there by adding a T. They’re is short for they are. The last one, their, is possessive and you just have to remember that you add an I in the middle: “They got their ball and went home.”

Close and Clothes

You could clean up the clothes from the floor, or just be lazy and close the door. Reminding kids that clothes means clothing can help them keep this pair straight.

So and Sew and Sow

Only in The Sound of Music is sol(silent L) “a needle pulling thread.” The right way to spell what you’re doing when you stitch on a button or fix a seam is sew. If you’re outside spreading seeds or planting, you’re sowing. So, you’ll just have to commit these to memory.

Complement and compliment

This one is more challenging than some other examples here. You use complement when talking about things that go well together, like “That shirt complements your skin tone.” It can also be a noun, referring to a complete set. A compliment, on the other hand, is a nice thing to say. To remember the difference, think “I paid you a compliment.”

Through and Threw

“He threw the ball through the window.” Remind yourself that threw is the past tense of throw, and they only vary by one letter. If you’re walking through a tunnel, or something is flying through a window, it is traveling—and the longer word fits.

Affect and Effect

These words are similar in usage and meaning, so are extra tricky. But in most cases, one is a noun and the other a verb. Think the effect to remember that effect is the noun form.

Of course, you add an extra wrinkle when affect is a noun (She has a false affect) and effect is a verb (We are working to effect a change), but those usages are less common, especially in kids’ writing.

Accept and Except

To accept something is to agree to it. To except is to rule something out. “I accept that you’re a better speller than I am.” “I love all of my classes, except gym.” Think ex for things you want to get rid of.

Knew and New

“You knew these already, but to kids, they’re all brand new.” Early writers commonly misspell knew, because of that pesky silent k. But once they remember that it’s the past tense of know (which is different from no) they won’t mess it up again.

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Laura Wallis is a freelance writer and editor specializing in all things family, home, food, and health. She currently lives in New Jersey with her husband, two children, and dog—none of whom take grammar as seriously as they should. She writes for The Stir by CafeMom.

3 Ways to Save Time on Social Media

Your alarm rings. You roll over, grab your phone, turn off the alarm, and immediately start scrolling through Instagram. Then you move to Facebook. Then Twitter. Then your work chat and email. Next thing you know, you have to rush through your morning routine and head to work.

Sound familiar?

If you’re wondering how to save time on social media, you’re not alone. Multiple studies have linked high social media use and negative feelings like dissatisfaction, disconnection, and even loneliness.

1 Save Time by Protecting Your Time

When I asked myself “how do you save time on social media?” one answer immediately popped into my head. You save time by conquering the need to respond and instead taking control of your time and energy. The dopamine surge you get from responding to social messages right away is real, and the red badge of doom haunts us all. But you can conquer the need to respond in real time, every time.

As someone who does social media for a living, I know it can be hard to disconnect. Earlier in my career, I tried to respond to every message, every tweet, every time, on time. I watched every trend. I liked every meme. And at the end of the day, I was exhausted, demoralized, and unsure of whether I had actually made an impact.

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Over time, I’ve learned that disconnecting from social media is as important as following it. In my professional life, I check certain channels at certain times, and build in certain nights and weekends when I am truly offline.

2 Establish a Social Media Routine

Once you understand which times you don’t want to be online, you can optimize the time you do spend on social media. I’ve found it’s helpful to have a routine, where you check the same channels in the same way every time. That way, you can save time by slowly chipping away at inefficiencies in your routine.

Personally, I’ve found my commute on public transit a great time to check up on social channels in the morning. As an example of a possible routine, here’s my morning social media protocol:

• Quickly scan push notifications, which I only receive from my calendar, work email, Slack, and Asana. Respond to anything I deem urgent.
• Check Twitter for any urgent mentions or DMs.
• Check Facebook for similarly urgent issues or emergencies.
• Quickly check LinkedIn for messages.
• Scroll through Instagram and Snapchat for the rest of my commute, saving ideas for future memes.

3 Get Lazy, Copy Others’ Tricks

Sometimes saving time on social media is as easy as finding tactics that work for others and copying them. If you have someone in your professional or personal life who seems like they’re always tweeting or snapping, buy them coffee and ask them how they balance their real life with their social media mavendom. You can also build a list of accounts you love, to get a sense of the number of posts they send per day. Either way, find some heroes, borrow their tactics, and go forth to build your own social media empire.

The Inaugural Guide to Writing the Perfect Tweet

Today marks the fifty-eighth United States presidential inauguration. As the US swears in Donald Trump as their leader, the world will watch not only the proceedings but also the new president’s active Twitter account. President Trump’s Twitter usage has been unprecedented compared to previous candidates and has put the social network squarely in the headlines for over a year.

Since the new leader of the United States loves Twitter, what better way to honor this inauguration than with an extensive guide to writing the perfect tweet? Check out our tips and leave your own in the comments below. Happy tweeting!

Discover Your Voice

.@aboymadeofsky No, Jonathan, I've never made a single decision in my life on the basis of whether it was cool.

— J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling) September 9, 2014

All tweets are written by someone (or some bot). But the best tweets reflect the unique voice of their author in as few characters as possible. Although defining your voice can be difficult for longer-form content, you can easily choose from your own personality attributes and apply them to your tweets. Just ask yourself whether you are fun, sassy, humble, aggressive, etc. It might take a moment of soul-searching, but your Twitter followers will thank you for writing something beyond “RT.”

Don’t Forget Visuals

A recent cartoon for @newscientist: pic.twitter.com/UCR9YvtINh

— Tom Gauld (@tomgauld) December 12, 2016

Instagram may be the social network for the image-obsessed, but Twitter still loves a good meme, gif, or video. If it’s relevant to your tweet and in line with your voice (see the tip above), share that Kermit meme! Attach that dancing man gif! Live your best life on Twitter, in photos.

Give Credit Where Credit Is Due

When advertisers don't understand that you can't just take an image off the internet, chop the artist's name off & add their logo �� pic.twitter.com/yRjvMdu1xM

— Gemma Correll (@gemmacorrell) January 18, 2017

Found a cartoon you love and have permission to share? Great! Just make sure you @ mention the author, or link to their website. Appreciating others’ work is great (we do it all the time), but stealing is not.

Keep It Short

Guilt is a dish best served by Mom.

— Dan (@Social_Mime) January 8, 2017

Twitter is the network of as few words as possible, plain and simple. Even if you’ve figured out how to write a novel in 140-character segments, that doesn’t mean you should. In fact, the ideal tweet is only 100 characters, so keep your amazing #MondayMotivation brief.

Keep It Clean

All this lead-up and I still need spellcheck to get INAUGURATION right. Thank god for @Grammarly (totally helped me with the hyphen too)

— Matt Portman (@Portations) January 18, 2017

Through our extensive grammar research (and all those tweets you keep sending us), Grammarly has found that social media is rife with writing errors. Don’t be the Twitter pundit whose salient points about current events are overshadowed by an easily avoidable spelling or grammar mistake. Clean it up!

Present Continuous

The present continuous verb tense indicates that an action or condition is happening now, frequently, and may continue into the future.

The Present Continuous Formula: to be [am, is, are] + verb [present participle]

Aunt Christine is warming up the car while Scott looks for his new leather coat. They are eating at Scott’s favorite restaurant today, Polly’s Pancake Diner.

Key words: Verb, present participle, tense, dynamic verbs, stative verbs

The present continuous (present progressive) tense is a way to convey any action or condition that is happening right now, frequently, and may be ongoing. It adds energy and action to writing, and its effect helps readers understand when the action is happening. Imagine Aunt Christine has surprised her nephew Scott for his birthday and is going to take him out to his favorite restaurant, Polly’s Pancake Diner. If I wanted to tell the story after it happened, I’d use the past tense:

They waited at the red light, and Scott worried they might miss their reservation. (Past tense)

But what I really want to convey is how the event unfolded, showing the action as it is happening:

They are sitting at Scott’s favorite booth, the one with the sparkling red plastic seats.(For how long? We don’t know, but we do know they are sitting there now.)

The waiter is standing behind the counter right now with a notepad in his hand and pencil behind his ear. (Will he ever make it over to the booth? Probably, but not now.)

“Are you waiting to open your presents after you eat your pancakes?” said Aunt Christine, taking a sip from her root beer. (Here the present continuous is being used in question form.)

From this narrative point of view, the action is immediate and continuous; there’s momentum. Sometimes writers use this tense to add suspense or humor in fictional pieces. What kind of pancakes will Scott and his aunt order? The suspense is killing me!

The Present Continuous Formula

To form the present continuous, follow this formula:

To Be [Am, Is, Are] + Verb [Present Participle]

When to Use the Present Continuous Tense

Use the present continuous tense with the appropriate “to be” verb and a dynamic verb. A dynamic verb shows action and/or process. For example,

Scott’s little sister is arriving at the diner two hours late because her roller-derby team, Chicks Ahoy, won the national championships early today. As she is walking into Polly’s Pancake Diner, she is yelling goodbye to her friends outside, and Scott hopes she doesn’t cause a scene since she is always embarrassing him in public.

When Not to Use the Present Continuous Tense

Do not use the present continuous tense with stative verbs. Stative verbs show a state of being that does not show qualities of change. These verbs can stay in the simple present. For example,

Aunt Christine is preferring the maple walnut pancakes over the banana peanut butter ones that Scott loves.

Aunt Christine prefers the maple walnut pancakes over the banana peanut butter ones that Scott loves.

Here, the stative verb to prefer shows opinion, and therefore should not be conjugated into the present continuous. Stative verb categories include emotion (to love), possession (to belong), and thoughts (to recognize), and none of these should use the present continuous form.

The Exception to the Rule

Some verbs can be both dynamic and stative! Think about the verbs to be and to think. In its dynamic form, the verb to be can show action:

Sarah, Scott’s little sister, is being bold by ordering the jalapeno-chipotle pancakes.

But in its stative form, the verb to be is awkward if conjugated in the present continuous.

Sarah is being a tall teenager, who loves her food spicy and her sports dangerous.

Sarah is a tall teenageer, who loves her food spicy and her sports dangerous.

Here are some more examples:

The waiter thinks Scott should save room for pumpkin pie. (Stative and in the simple present)

The waiter is thinking about getting a new job that requires less human interaction, like a veterinarian. (Dynamic and in the present continuous)

Idiomatic Expressions and Style

English can be confusing; what is grammatically correct isn’t always what you might hear in music, in advertisements, or during regular conversations. The present continuous is often used incorrectly. Consider the the popular slogan for McDonald’s: “I’m Lovin’ It.” This is a grammatically incorrect sentence because to love is a stative verb, so why would McDonald’s use it in their advertisements?

This marks the difference between grammar and style. Using the present continuous as a means to exaggerate is a stylistic trend, and as such, it would not be surprising to hear this conversation:

Scott, glazed with a chocolate mustache, looks over to his aunt and says, “I’m lovin’ me some of these chocolate peanut butter banana pancakes!” “I’m hearing what you’re saying!” she replies, sprinkling powdered sugar atop the stacks on her plate.

Here Scott and his Aunt display their excitement in a silly way, emphasizing their feelings. On the other hand, you would never hear a native speaker say these sentences:

Scott is loving his Aunt Christine, a self-proclaimed pancake connoisseur. (People would simply say “Scott loves his Aunt Christine . . .”)

Sarah is hearing the music from their table-top juke box and resists the urge to dance on the table. (Sarah hears the music. . .)

The Final Say

If you are teaching English or learning it, I’d recommend simply sticking to grammatically correct constructions and leaving the idiomatic expressions to the creators of advertisements and song lyrics. In formal writing, the experts recommend that when you can use fewer words to express a thought, you should, so use the present continuous sparingly—short and sweet can’t be beat!

Common Construction in the Present Continuous Tense

 

Common Dynamic Verbs that USE the Present Continuous

Common Stative Verbs that DO NOT USE the Present Continuous

The State of Writing 2016

The first sentence can’t be written until the final sentence is written. — Joyce Carol Oates

With 2016 coming to a close, Grammarly’s team of writing analysts took a look at the biggest trends in writing in English this year. And we found some fascinating results! Below are the grammar and writing trends that dominated 2016, as well as our predictions for the next year in written English.

First, we looked at where we write, and found that this has changed significantly over time! We wouldn’t have all these newfangled typing machines without a long history of making English writing faster, easier, and more efficient.

Don’t remember when the printing press was invented? Check out this blog on how we’ve written since writing became a thing.

From Pens to Keys—The Complete History of Writing Tools

Our team also looked at some “trendy” words in 2016, and related them back to linguistic traditions. Old linguistic traditions.

Don’t know why “verbing” is such a big deal, or why “tweens” are their own age group? Check out this blog on how old words are being used in new ways.

New Uses for Old Words

2016 was a rich year for the growth of writing online. The best part? Our users wrote more in 2016 than ever before! If you’d like to find out more about the best times and places write, check out this blog on writing productivity.

10 Habits Today’s Writers Share

In 2016, Grammarly checked more than 31 billion words! As we analyzed various types of writing, we found that a few different trends emerged. Check out this blog to find out which grammar mistakes ruled the year, based on our user data.

Here Are the Top 10 Grammar Mistakes of 2016

Although we saw millions of very real grammar errors, we also noticed that some grammar rules may be going out of style. Check out this blog if you want to know which rules are in danger of extinction, based on data from our users.

Which Grammar Rules Are Dying?

We also recognized that writing as a profession changed in the last year, with the ever-increasing consumption of content and the difficulty of making a living creating it. Here are some of the trends we observed in the professional writing space.

Writers on the State of Professional Writing

Slang and text speak usage continues to rise with the popularity of messaging apps on more devices, in more places. Whether grammar pedants like it or not, it appears that slang is here to stay, so we have outlined some of the most popular slang words of the year.

Here Are the Top 10 Slang Words of 2016

Want to know which trends will dominate online writing in 2017? We have three ideas about how English writing will grow and change in the next year. (Don’t panic, grammar pedants!)

3 Trends That Will Dominate English Writing in 2017

19 Llamas Who Get How You Feel After Vacation

You just got back from vacation, and it’s your first day back at work. You’re numb. Everything seems pointless. People say “Happy Monday!” and all you can think is:

If anyone knows how you feel, it’s a pack of llamas. (Or alpacas. We’re using both, because they’re both certified to help you get over post-vacation blues.) Llamas and their alpaca friends have experienced the ups and downs of vacation and its aftermath, and they can truly understand the struggle of getting back to the routine.

So if you just got back from a trip—or if you could use a pick-me-up, or even if you just llike llamas a llot—here are some empathetic llamas to help you through the journey of getting back from your journey. Just try not to actually spit on your coworkers. Tempting as it is, it’ll make things harder in the long run.

The first thing you usually face when you get back—aside from the uncontrollable urge to spit—is kind of like mourning. You waited for months for that vacation, and while you were on your trip, you were free.

You were on top of the world.

You could do anything at all, no matter how crazy it seemed.

But in a snap, it was gone. Packing, travel, jetlag. You had to book it to make it back to a place you don’t even really want to be.

So here you are, in the office once again. Alarm clocks, small talk around the coffee pot, busy work. The tedium and monotony of the daily grind.

Just the thought of looking at the millions of emails that piled up while you were away is like the idea of being force-fed reject leftovers.

Everything feels empty. You can’t find your drive. You’d do anything to dodge that next meeting.

You remember that thing you were sure you’d be more motivated to do once you got back. Nope. Nuh-uh. I’m out.

Did you just nod off at your desk?

The millionth person just asked you how your trip was, and you got nostalgic and almost shed a tear, or maybe just had to hold back your rage at being told “Welcome back!” It’s official: you might actually be going insane.

At this point, you’re tempted to make a run for it and never look back.

But don’t despair. You just have to get back into the right mindset. Let yourself wallow in your post-vacation blues for a bit. Zone out, feel grumpy, eat your favorite snacks.

But then, kick yourself back into action. You can only heave a heavy sigh every time you look at a picture of your vacation spot so many times before you lose it. So absorb the joyous memories of your trip, and then ease back into your regular routine. Set yourself mini deadlines, give yourself rewards, read lists of tips for getting over the post-vacation blues. And after a few days of feeling weird about being back, you’ll start getting back in sync.

And really, it’s not all bad. You have your friends, and maybe you even like some of your coworkers. Isn’t it kind of nice to rejoin the pack?

Once you get used to your daily tasks and remind yourself there are people you like, you’ll find that you’ve hit your stride. It’s really not so bad, once you get into the groove.

It may feel like a big stretch. But once you get into it, you’ll realize you were thirsty for the rewards of your life at home.

In no time, even when you’re getting that torrent of emails and piles of new projects, you will no longer be phased. After you’ve soaked up the glory of your vacay and re-acclimated to your normal environment, you’ll find yourself ready to take on anything.

How to Use Keywords to Make a Resume Recruiters Notice

Do you tailor your resume to match the job you’re applying for? There are some compelling reasons that you should. You already tailor other things you write to a specific audience, (e.g., emails, term papers, brochures). Why should your resume be any different?

Tips for Writing a Great Resume

Here are a few simple tips on how to write a resume and tailor it to a job description.

Know Your Skills

A good place to start is by making a master list of your skills. But why make a master list if you’re just going to take keywords from the job listing?

The list helps you identify what kinds of job listings to target. Also, it will help you prioritize the skill keywords you will take from the job listing.

So, think back on all of the jobs you’ve had and the skills you’ve learned over the years. As you add them to your list, put the ones you feel strongest about at the top.

By putting your strongest skills at the top, you can see how close you are to being the perfect candidate when you select different job listings. For example, when your strongest skills line up with the skills the recruiter emphasizes in the job listing, there’s a better chance you’ll get called in for an interview.

If you’re worried about whether a skill is relevant, add it anyhow. It’s best to get it all on paper and save the cherry-picking for later.

Mine the Job Listing for Skills Keywords

Carefully read the job listing and highlight any skills the employer mentions.

These are keywords. When a hiring manager first looks at your resume, she will scan it for these keywords. And she will only spend an average of six seconds trying to find them.

That means that you need to put the most important keywords at the top of your resume. Make other keywords eye-catching with embellishments like numbers and accomplishments.

For example, let’s say one of the requirements in the job listing is “excellent customer service skills.” You’ve decided to add it to your experience section as a key responsibility from your last job.

But don’t just write

Responsible for handling customer service.

Add some value.

Spearheaded a customer service initiative that saved the company over $50,000 and resulted in a 10% decrease in returns.

Now the recruiter knows how excellent you are at customer service—$50,000 worth!

Here’s a tip: If you’ve ever cut costs or increased revenue, add that information. If you’re not sure by how much, estimate. Just be sure that you can back up your estimation with proof.

Identify Vital Skills

Try to find two to three other job listings similar to the one featuring the job you’re applying for. Read through them and mark the skills listed. If you find skills that are common across these listings, there’s a good chance they’re either mandatory or highly desirable for the job you’re targeting.

Next, take a trip over to LinkedIn and look at other professionals’ profiles. What skills do they list? How are they similar? If you see a pattern, you’ve figured out which skills are most likely relevant keywords for your resume.

Categorize the Remaining Skills for Perspective

The rest of the keyword skills should fall into one of three categories:

• Job-related
• Transferable
• Adaptive

Job-related skills are necessary for you to do the work at hand. They include things like knowing Java and Python or having the ability to operate a forklift. Chances are if you don’t have most of the job-related skills, you can’t do the work.

Make sure these skills go in prominent places on your resume, like the summary or leading bullet points in your experience section. You want the hiring manager to check them off his must-have list as quickly as possible.

Transferable skills are less important than the other types. They are basic skills that most people have because they carry them from one job to another. They include things like knowing how to create pivot tables in Microsoft Excel. Hiring managers welcome them on resumes but don’t treat them as unique or extraordinary. What they can do for you is flesh out your resume and give you extra value. So, feature them in your skills section.

Here’s a tip: Don’t just write Microsoft Excel.

Add the detail about the pivot tables: Microsoft Excel, pivot tables

Adaptive skills are the most elusive. They are skills like dependability and assertiveness. Usually, they are self-taught survival skills that help us thrive in society.

The very nature of these skills makes them difficult to measure and demonstrate. If possible, pair the ones you feel strongest about with accomplishments that illustrate them. Scatter them throughout your resume where appropriate.

Find Out if You Did a Good Job With Keywords

Dropping your tailored resume into a word generator like Wordle allows you to see which words you used the most. Cloud generators make words bigger when they are used more often in a piece of text. Ignore small words like “at” or “the” and focus on the dominance of your keywords.

If the most prominent words are not your keywords, you may want to rewrite your resume to increase the frequency with which you use those words. Adding more keywords will also improve the chances that your resume will pass an applicant tracking system (ATS) scan. If you need certain keywords to show up more frequently, add them to your skills or experience section.

Tailored Resumes Get You Hired

In an age where we are constantly bombarded and overwhelmed with information, you can’t expect a hiring manager to pick up a generic resume and find it relevant.

It is necessary to customize your resume to match both the job listing and a hiring manager’s expectations. Otherwise, you might just miss that golden opportunity.

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About the author: Natalie Severt is a writer at Uptowork. She writes about how to create successful resumes to help job seekers land their dream jobs. When she isn’t writing, she eats tacos and reads complicated novels. You can find her on Twitter.

Sentence Fragments

Sentence fragments are snippets of words that don’t quite add up to a complete thought. There are several common types of sentence fragments, including:

• Subordinate clause fragments
• Participial phrase fragments
• Infinitive phrase fragments

Let’s take a look at each of them.

To understand sentence fragments, we must first know what a complete sentence looks like. In its most basic form, a sentence consists of a subject (a noun) and a predicate (a verb). In rare cases, the subject is implied and you can leave off the noun, as in the imperative sentence Go! Let’s stick with the basics for now.

Example: I ran.

In the example above, “I” is the subject, the doer of the action. “Ran” is the predicate. We can add clauses and descriptors to this basic sentence, further developing our thoughts: “I ran far away,” “Because I was being chased by a flock of seagulls, I ran far away,” etc.

Grammatically sound sentences like “I ran” are also called independent clauses. Because they’re independent, they can stand by themselves as complete thoughts. Dependent clauses, on the other hand, lack either a subject or predicate. Writers run into trouble when their dependent clauses attempt to masquerade as complete thoughts.

Subordinate Clause Fragments

Incorrect: Because of Sarah’s bad hip.

“Because” is a subordinating conjunction that indicates the start of a subordinate—or dependent—clause. Notice that it does not contain a predicate (a verb phrase). This fragment withholds key information from the reader. For example, what happened to Sarah because of her hip?

Correct: Because of Sarah’s bad hip, she was no longer able to compete in ballroom dance tournaments. Correct: They had to walk slowly because of Sarah’s bad hip.

Participial Phrase Fragments

Incorrect: Worrying about money.

In this example, we have a participial phrase that seems to have broken off from a complete sentence. We don’t know who is doing the worrying or what impact it has. To correct this, we need to fully develop the thought.

Correct: Worrying about money ruined their marriage. Correct: Monica was tired of worrying about money.

Infinitive Phrase Fragments

Incorrect: To find El Dorado.

An infinitive is a verb plus the word “to.” In the example above, “to find” is the infinitive. On its own, an infinitive phrase doesn’t constitute a complete thought.

Correct: Many explorers risked their lives to find El Dorado. Correct: To find El Dorado, many explorers risked their lives.

Are Fragments Ever Okay?

As with most rules of English grammar, there is an exception. Sometimes sentence fragments can be used stylistically—but don’t abuse the privilege. Stylistic fragments belong in informal writing or creative work, and even then they should be used sparingly. They can be used to increase tension in a scene or to convey narrative tone, but too many fragments dilute the effect.

Example: Running through the trees. Gasping for breath. They were close. Too close. She wasn’t going to make it.

Example: If John didn’t find a job soon, he was going to be out on the street. He’d tried everywhere—temp agencies, bookstores, libraries. Even Dairy Queen. Nothing. Not even a nibble.

Most of the time, automated spell-checkers don’t discriminate between intentional sentence fragments and mistakes, so you’ll have to use your best judgment. For more tips on identifying and correcting sentence fragments, another great resource is Purdue’s Online Writing Lab.

#Yodify your Grammar

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.

To share this infographic with your readers, embed it in your blog post by pasting the following HTML snippet into your web editor:

A Grammar and Style Guide to #Yodify Your Language

 INVERTED WORD ORDER

“Powerful you have become. The dark side I sense in you.”

In Yoda-speak, modifiers (adjectives, adverbs, and modifying clauses) as well as objects often come before rather than after the subject and verb in a sentence. But the sentence doesn’t become completely scrambled:

“If into the security recordings you go, only pain will you find.”

Note that “if” is still placed at the very beginning of the sentence, as it would be in proper English.

FLEXIBLE SUBJECT-VERB ORDER

“Ready are you? What know you of ready? For eight hundred years have I trained Jedi. My own counsel will I keep on who is to be trained.”

In most cases, Yoda gets the subject-verb order right for English—subject then verb. Sometimes, however, he switches the order of verbs and subjects. This tells us that the placement of subjects and verbs in Yoda’s native language is much more fluid than in English.

MISSING AUXILIARY IN NEGATION and LACK OF CONTRACTIONS

“Size matters not. Look at me. Judge me by my size, do you? Hmm? Hmm. And well you should not.”

When Yoda wants to negate a verb he does something peculiar—he omits the helping verb “to do” and instead places “not” after the verb. “Size does not matter” becomes “Size matters not.” Curiously, Yoda’s phrasing is perfectly standard English when the main verb is “to do,” as in “Do or do not. There is no try.” In fact, one can say that Yoda learned the correct way to negate “to do” and “to be” (e.g. “I am not”) and applies that construction consistently to all verbs.

Additionally, English teachers and lovers of formal writing should be proud that—despite his other mistakes—at least Yoda never used a contraction. Every “don’t” or “won’t” or “shouldn’t” for Yoda was a do not, will not, or a should not.

DROPPED AUXILIARY IN PRESENT TENSE QUESTIONS

“Ready are you? What know you of ready?”

Many ESL learners struggle with the added “do” in English questions. As with his removal of “do” in most negations, Yoda often drops the “do” in questions; he forms questions with the interrogative pronoun, followed by the subject and verb (occasionally inverted). “Where do you go?” becomes “Where go you?” and “Why do you say that?” becomes “Why that you say?” For other tenses, the auxiliary “do” remains, but often the word order is inverted.

 

If to #Yodify something you want, follow these main rules you must:

1. Move your modifiers, modifier phrases, and objects in front of your subject-verb phrase.

2. Swap your subject-verb order.

3. Drop the auxiliary “do” when negating most verbs and place the negation after the verb.

4. Do not use contractions.

5. Drop the auxiliary “do” in present tense questions.

 

Check out some of our favorite quotes in literature, #Yodified:

“Across the sky a screaming comes.” (Thomas Pynchon, Gravity’s Rainbow)

“A bright and cold day in April it was, and the clocks thirteen were striking.” (George Orwell, 1984)

“The best of times it was, the worst of times it was.” (Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities)

“You know not about me, without a book by the name of Adventures of Tom Sawyer you have read; but no matter it is.” (Mark Twain, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn)

“The saddest story have I heard, this is.” (Ford Madox Ford, The Good Soldier)

“The moment English one learns, set in complications do.” (Felipe Alfau, Chromos)

 

What are your favorite literary quotes, #Yodified? Share in the comments!

Anytime vs. Any Time

A century ago, it was standard to write any time as two words in all contexts. But it’s now perfectly acceptable to write anytime as one word when you’re using it as an adverb. However, some readers still consider it a casualism, so you may want to stick to the two-word version for extremely formal writing.

• When in doubt, write any time as two words. It might look a little old-fashioned, but it won’t be wrong.
• Anytime is an adverb that means “whenever” or “at any time.” You can use it like you would any other adverb: Call me anytime. Call me often. Call me quickly.
• You can’t use anytime with a preposition like at. If you have a preposition, you need the two-word version: They could call at any time.
• You also need the two-word version when you’re talking about an amount of time: Do you have any time to speak to us today?

When Is Anytime One Word?

You can write anytime as one word or as two words when you are using it as an adverb.

I am available anytime if you’d like me to help you with your novel.

I am available any time if you’d like me to help you with your novel.

My new bicycle allows me to go anywhere, anytime.

My new bicycle allows me to go anywhere, any time.

If you’re not sure whether you’re using anytime as an adverb, try substituting some other adverb like “quickly” or “loudly.” My new bicycle allows me to go anywhere quickly. If the adverb works, then it’s OK to make anytime one word. You can also make it two words, but to some readers it will look old-fashioned or more formal.

You can also use anytime (or any time) as a conjunction.

Anytime the sun went down, we’d go for a night-swim.

Any time the sun went down, we’d go for a night-swim.

There’s no difference in meaning.

When Is Any Time Two Words?

There are a couple of cases where you have to make any time two words.

Any time has to be two words when you use it with a preposition like “at.”

You can call me at any time of the day, even at night.

You can call me at anytime of the day, even at night.

You also have to make any time two words when you’re talking about an amount of time.

Do you have any time to speak with us today?

Do you have anytime to speak with us today?

How to Write a Follow-up Email That Gets a Response: 7 Action Tips

If only the people you emailed would answer every time. Unfortunately, many of your emails are destined to go unanswered. The average email user receives ninety-two emails per day (seventeen of which are likely to be spam) and opens only about one in three. If you want to make yourself heard in a noisy digital world, being able to write a compelling follow-up email is an essential skill.

Although a follow-up about a job application will look quite different from one asking for a charitable donation, here are seven tips that apply no matter what sort of email you’re crafting.

1Take time to create an attention-getting subject line

Half the battle when it comes to getting a response is getting your email opened in the first place. The average open rate for emails is 34 percent. Although the odds are stacked against your lowly digital missive, you can improve them by investing extra time into creating a subject header that’s difficult to ignore. While there are exceptions to every rule, these strategies are known to get results:

• Keep it short. Forty percent of emails are opened on mobile. Short subject lines are less likely to get cut off.
• Use concise language. Get your inner Hemingway on and don’t waste words. Cut weasel words and filler.
• Ask a question. Emails with questions in their subject lines can impel readers to open the message, either to search for the answer or to provide one.
• Don’t get salesy. Create interest without resorting to hyperbole. Would you want to open an email you suspected was nothing more than a sales pitch?
• Try a headline analyzer. While tools like CoSchedule’s Headline Analyzer are meant for article headlines, they work well for checking email subject lines, too.

By the way, it’s important that your subject line reflect your email’s objective, which brings us to our next tip.

2 Know your objective, then stick to the subject

What are you trying to accomplish with your follow-up email? It’s important to have a desired outcome in mind so you can keep your email focused on achieving it. Are you writing to ask for a meeting? Request a status update? Ask a favor? Say thanks? Whatever your goal, everything from your subject line to your message body to your sign-off should help you reach that goal.

Don’t stray off on any tangents before you’ve gotten a response to your email and engaged in a conversation, even if, ultimately, your request will have lots of moving parts.

For instance, let’s say you’re following up on a job application. Your brain may be turning over all sorts of big-picture issues like your salary requirements or availability. But before you can talk about any of those things you have to accomplish just one—get an interview. That means your follow-up email should be laser focused on providing only the information that will convince a potential employer to offer you an interview. Don’t throw in side notes that will muddy the waters.

3 Use the right salutation

When you’re writing a prospective employer to follow up on your application, always use:

Dear [Name],

In fact, in any sort of formal email it’s appropriate to begin with “Dear” rather than “Hi.” “Hey” is arguably the most informal salutation of them all, so save it for when you’re corresponding with someone you know and have a friendly relationship with.

Here’s a tip: When you’re writing a formal business email, it’s traditional to follow “Dear” with a colon rather than a comma.

4 Open with some context

Even if your follow-up email is threaded and contains your original email, it’s still a good practice to include a sentence or two of context.

Dear Bob,

The upcoming mobile app, Awesomest Thing Ever, is in beta. I wrote last week to ask whether you’d like to be one of the first to take it for a test drive.

It’s not necessary to reiterate everything; just highlight what’s crucial. Ask yourself, “What’s the bare minimum my recipient must understand so that the rest of my email makes sense?”

5 Personalize it

Add a personal touch to your emails whenever you can. If you met the recipient at a conference, say so. If you read an article they’ve written, mention your favorite takeaway. If you’ve interviewed with them for a job, reference a highlight from the interview.

I was inspired by what you said about Excellent Company’s branding strategy. Not only does your vision closely match my own, but I feel I could learn and grow as a part of your team.

The key is to sound friendly but not smarmy. Personalization shouldn’t involve random name-dropping. It should help establish your connection with the recipient. Don’t force it.

6 Don’t be vague

Your first email might not have gotten a response because you didn’t clearly state its purpose. Your follow-up email affords you a chance to correct that.

Journalists receive a ton of pitch emails daily from PR representatives who want them to cover a story. One of their pet peeves, and the thing most likely to cause them to delete an email, is having no clue what that email is actually about. As Matthew Hughes wrote for The Next Web:

The best pitches I get are the ones where I can understand the product or story after reading just one paragraph. Drop the jargon and the braggadocio – just keep it short and simple.

Whether you’re following up on a pitch or a request for a meeting, be specific and state clearly what you want to happen.

I wish to discuss collaboration perspectives with you.

You’d like to what, now? What does “collaboration perspectives” even mean?

I’d like to write an article for your blog, and I hope you’ll write one for mine in return.

Oooh! Now we get it.

7 Include a call to action

If you want the recipient to respond to your email, in most cases you’re going to have to ask for it. That request is called a call to action.

CTAs are a marketing tool, but they’re important in email follow-ups, as well. They point your recipient toward the next step, which in turn prompts a response. Here are a few examples.

Request a meeting

I’d like to meet for lunch and ask you a few questions about Mega Corp’s email strategy. Would Tuesday at noon work?

Ask for feedback

I know you have great insight to offer when it comes to [topic.] Would you take a few moments to share your feedback?

Solicit a sale, donation, or subscription

Reveal your mystery coupon

Donate by [date] and [Company] will match your donation!

Subscribe today to stay in the loop!

After a job interview

I thought I’d pass along links to the clips I mentioned yesterday. Is there anything else you’d like me to send?

Keeping it simple isn’t always simple

Now that you’ve learned some of the tricks to writing a great follow-up email, you face one more challenge—keeping it short and sweet. (A study by the email app Boomerang showed that emails between seventy-five and one hundred words have the best response rates.)

The more concise your follow-up email, the longer it will probably take you to write it. Crafting emails that stick to the subject, clearly state a purpose, and include a compelling call to action is trickier than it seems. Practice makes perfect! Invest time into fine-tuning your follow-up emails and you’re sure to earn more replies.

5 Helpful Tips on How to Collaborate with Engineers

Engineers look at the world differently from non-engineers. They are usually extremely logical, pragmatic, and direct, while the rest of us can be somewhat more whimsical, emotional and aspirational. Unfortunately, when working together, these different perspectives present unique communication challenges that can slow work, deliver sub-optimal results, and weaken company culture if not addressed.

Collaborating effectively with an engineer means learning to communicate like an engineer.

I’m not talking about mastering engineer-speak. What I’m getting at is recognizing how sales, marketing, and support teams communicate differently from engineering teams and adapting your communication style when working with engineers.

Here are some basics for collaborating and communicating productively with engineers.

Tips for Talking to Engineers

1 Build sincere trust.

This should be obvious, but healthy, productive relationships require trust. Day-to-day, you build trust with your immediate team members, you may not realize it. In fact every time you solve a problem together, talk about your weekend together, or achieve a goal together, you are contributing to the trust in your team relationships.

Many times, however, we do not have the same experiences with the engineers we need to work with and don’t have the same protective trust that supports our communication. To this end, it’s helpful to invest a little time getting to know the engineers: ask them how their weekend was, ask them what they’re working on, invite them for coffee. Little, sincere actions every day go a long way to ensure trustful working relationships that have a bit of protection if misunderstandings arise.

2 Include engineers in your brainstorms.

One of the most frustrating situations at work for everyone—including engineers—is when it seems someone is telling you how to do your work. Unfortunately, this happens often with engineers because they are not regularly included in initial brainstorms. What this means is often we come up with solutions that are not realistic or practical from an engineering perspective. We write up specs and set up meetings to pitch our solution to the engineers, only to find out that it won’t work. This approach wastes time and money.

The simple solution is to include engineers from the beginning, ensuring you develop realistic and practical solutions and that you have buy-in from the engineering team. However, it’s not enough just to invite them to the brainstorm and still pitch them your solution. A much better approach is to ask them for their solutions. Tell them the problem you want to solve and see what they come up with.

3Listen.

This tip is straightforward and piggybacks nicely on the previous suggestion.

Here’s a tip: Talk with engineers instead of to them.

Ask questions, stay open-minded, and be ready to discuss options.

4Respect their time.

This is office politeness 101 and goes for everyone. But it’s especially important with engineers who are often working without a project manager or a CTO. These developers usually juggle many projects for different teams, and they alone are responsible for those outcomes. Time is precious. To get the most of your time with an engineer, it’s important that you schedule and prepare for a meeting.

How to Structure a Meeting with an Engineer

• Clarify ownership—make sure you’re talking to the best person to help you.
• Put the meeting on the calendar.
• Send an outline or an agenda in advance.
• Avoid small talk.
• Ask about a solution instead of giving it.
• Discuss options and trade-offs.
• Determine next steps and deadlines.

5 Learn to speak their language.

The workplace today is increasingly diverse. It’s important to understand not just differences in professional expertise but also in culture that may influence your communication choices at work. I’m not suggesting you need to learn another language, but it is helpful to speak the same language on a similar level. There are numerous strategies on how to communicate well across cultures. However, negotiating this layer of communication does not have to be complicated—simply use plain language.

Plain Language Tips

• Avoid jargon, idioms, and complicated phrasing.
• Speak slowly.
• Speak one at a time.
• Stop and check that everyone is on the same page.

When it comes to communicating well with engineers, a lot of the rules that work for just about everyone also work for them. If you spend some time getting to know your engineers, build trust, respect their time with planning, and respect their expertise by asking questions and including them in developing solutions, collaborating with engineers is easy.

14 Business Jargon Phrases People Love To Hate

When humans aggregate into groups, we tend to develop new lexicons specific to our group context. Wizards complain about “muggles,” high schoolers aspire to “squad goals”—and occasionally a mid-level manager stares fervently into your eyes and tells you it’s time to “shift the paradigm.”

In recent years business jargon has somehow evolved into a tangled mess of annoying, pretentious, tired clichés that are more effective at obscuring than clarifying meaning.

If you haven’t guessed already, this post is for all you noble crusaders against jargon (a.k.a. “haters”) who have had enough of “moving the needle,” “idea showers,” and “putting your ducks in row.” Whether you’re a jargon-hater or you consider it a necessary (if annoying) part of office life, take a moment during your “bio break” to enjoy our list of the worst workspeak phrases we love to hate.

via GIPHY

1Low-Hanging Fruit

Are you skipping blithely through an orchard, plucking apples for your grandmother’s pie? No? We didn’t think so. This ridiculous phrase is all about going for the quick fix and the easy win in order to get immediate results. So go ahead and put all the hard stuff on the “back burner”—there’s zero chance that could come back to bite you, right?

2Leverage

Mind-numbingly overused, and a favorite of managers attempting to “climb the ladder.”

“Leveraging our goodwill with millennials will help us increase sales.”

Please, quit deluding yourself. Incessantly using “leverage” as a verb does not increase our estimation of your intelligence.

3Open the Kimono

One of the stranger artifacts of office lingo, “open the kimono” means to reveal information or secrets, such as the inner workings of a company or the details of a project. If being low-key racist and sexist doesn’t turn you off, this phrase is also exceptionally creepy.

4Giving 110%

A hyperbolic phrase synonymous with “going above and beyond.” Translation: “We’d like you to work fourteen-hour days for the next two weeks because of an arbitrary decision the CEO made.” Unless you’re a professional athlete or Little League coach, this phrase should not be in your vocabulary.

5Learnings

One of the most heinous buzzwords to crawl out of the office petri dish.

“On this next slide I’ll share my main learnings from the conference.”

Please, don’t ever share your “learnings” with us, just tell us what you learned. #MakeLearningAVerbAgain

6Out of Pocket

A term with dubious etymology meaning “I won’t be available.”

“I’ll be out of pocket this week. You can reach out to my assistant with any urgent requests.”

Okay, enough with the abysmal out-of-office messages. For those of you who would like to make a positive impression, here are ten out of office messages you’ll want to copy.

7Drink the Kool-Aid

Meaning to unquestioningly buy into something, such as a company’s “mission.” This common idiom originated from the mass suicide-massacre of 1978 when over 900 members of the Jonestown commune were forced to drink poisoned Flavor Aid by their crazed leader. So, maybe you should stop casually referencing horrific tragedies during your board meetings.

8Bio Break

An annoying and unnecessary euphemism for taking a bathroom break during a meeting. Seriously, all you need to do is announce a ten-minute break. You can spare us the details.

9Blue Sky Thinking

Thinking “outside the box” wasn’t enough. Your new imperative is to think in a way that is so exceptionally creative that you are unbound by the constraints of convention, common sense, or even reality. It’s all blue sky up there, baby!

10Tiger Team

A group of specialists assembled to tackle a particular problem.

“The Tiger Team is working to get the pension problem under control.”

Stop kidding yourself. Unless you’re an elite government hacker (the origin of the term) or you’re wearing tights and shouting “Thundercats, Hooo!” you are not in a Tiger Team.

11Idea Shower or Thought Shower

A brainstorm, but apparently with no brains required. Please keep your “thought showers” to yourself, thank you very much.

12Moving the Goalposts

Changing an expectation or parameter of an ongoing project, making the project more difficult to complete.

“If our client keeps moving the goalposts, we won’t be able to deliver their report on time!”

This is also a great way to cheat at games in your backyard, when you’re a child.

“Mom! Benny moved the goalposts again! It’s not fair!”

13Drill Down

To investigate something in detail. Synonymous with the equally insufferable “let’s unpack that” and “peeling the onion.”

14Gain Traction

An infuriatingly overused buzzword meaning “to gain popularity.”

“Our new SeeFood app has failed to gain traction, we’ve only had twelve downloads.”

Who knows, maybe you would gain more traction if you didn’t use such terrible business jargon all the time.

It’s your turn to weigh in! Circle back with the business jargon you dislike the most.

via GIPHY

How to Use Assure vs. Ensure vs. Insure

• To assure someone is to remove someone’s doubts.
• To ensure something is to make sure it happens—to guarantee it.
• To insure something or someone is to cover it with an insurance policy.

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Some sources note that people use assure, ensure, and insure interchangeably. All three verbs have something to do with “making sure” and are therefore similar, but each of them has a distinct meaning that makes it better suited for some uses than the other two. So they might not be an interchangeable trio so much as they are simply commonly confused words.

What Does Assure Mean?

Assure is something you would do to a person or an animal. These beings can have doubts or insecurities you can remove by assuring them, by giving them assurance:

I assure you, we will get to the play on time.

Tom locked the door, assuring Tim that their dog wouldn’t be able to wander out during the night.

In the United Kingdom and other countries of the Commonwealth, the word assurance can also refer to a particular type of insurance:

I’m thinking about taking out a life assurance policy.

What Does Ensure Mean?

When you ensure something, you’re making sure it is going to happen:

I need to study more to ensure I get a passing grade.

He scored thirty-five points last night, ensuring that his team will have a place in the finals.

What Does Insure Mean?

To insure something or someone is to cover it with an insurance policy, a kind of agreement that states that if something happens to someone or something that’s insured, the insurance company will provide compensation:

I don’t want to insure my car, but the law says I have to.

The insurance company said they won’t insure our house against floods.

Examples

Sportswear manufacturer BLK’s receivers have moved to assure the company’s customers it will be “business as usual” amid uncertainty among professional sporting outfits.

The Sydney Morning Herald

Beyond the numbers, California’s electric vehicles policies are leading the way by ensuring that low-income communities benefit from zero tailpipe emissions.

The Sacramento Bee

This means drivers, now typically paying around £50 a year to the Treasury when they insure their car, will see it rise to above £60.

The Guardian