16 Original Pun-inspired Costumes to Wear This Halloween

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.

1Drawn and Quartered

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.

2Cool Hand Luke

You can keep your cool hand, Luke . . . just don’t give us the cold shoulder! This simple, comfy costume is straight out of your dad’s joke vault. Pick out a comfortable outfit—anything will do. Make a name tag and write “Luke” on it. Then, for the clincher, paint your hand blue. You’re all set! If you want to beef up the authenticity, pick an outfit that really channels Paul Newman.

3Barewolf

This costume is so great we can barely contain ourselves! Becoming the Barewolf is easy. Take your standard, run-of-the-mill werewolf costume, but strip it down, using only the bare minimum—some fangs or wolf paws. Bonus points if you can find a nude-colored body-suit. The best part about this costume is you literally don’t have to try!

4Punk’in Spice

Would you tell Sid Vicious that he was basic? No, we didn’t think so. Get your teen angst on with this punk-inspired costume! The goal here is to put the “punk” in “punk’in spice.” After you get your punk look down, finish your look off with a “spice” name tag, or—if you’re feeling ambitious—build a wearable spice rack. Need some punk makeup tips? Check out this tutorial.

5Corn on the Bob

Put the corn anywhere you like; the costume is yours! And then add another little happy corn friend, because everyone needs a friend! With this costume, corn on the cob meets Bob Ross. Get an afro-style wig, unbutton your shirt maybe one button too many, and cover yourself in corn—painted corn cobs are even better.

6Australian Shepherd

This costume is doggone dinky-di, mate! Sometimes taking things literally has pun-tential. Think back to all those Christmases you spent staring at the nativity scene while your grandpa told you about his bunions for the fiftieth time. Channel your inner sheep herd, then brush up on your Aussie accent. DIY done.

7Ozzy Pawsbourne

Extra credit if you play “Bark at the Moon” and howl alllll night. This costume can be an individual costume or a couple’s costume with your pup. If you’re going solo, dress up as Ozzy Osbourne, equipped with collar, dog ears, and tail. If you’ve got a canine companion, you dress as Sharon and style your dog as Ozzy.

8The Red “C”

Ahhh, we sea what you did there. Wear a comfy outfit and top it with a red C. Simple AND clever.

9Mockingbird

“Hey, I like your costume!” “Hey, I like your costume! . . . ” Dress like a bird. You can go full DIY or get a great costume on Amazon, but the best part is you can playfully “mock” people all night.

10The Walking Bread

Graaains! Grrrrainnns! Mmmm! Who doesn’t love zombie bread? Get this great bread costume or a simple bread T-shirt and zombie it up with some make-up to become The Walking Bread!

Get your #2 pencils ready, folks! We’re giving extra credit for word-inspired costumes!

1Comma, Comma, Comma Chameleon

Everyone will have to pause to appreciate this awesome costume! Start by getting a chameleon costume, then attach some felt commas with velcro or hot glue. Voila!

2Colon or Semicolon Powell

“There are no secrets to [costume] success. It is the result of preparation, hard work, and learning from failure.” —Colin Powell This one is simple! Just find your most political suit, and snag a pair of glasses from the thrift shop! Attach colons or semicolons to the outfit with pins or hot glue. Check out Colin Powell reference photos to make sure you nail the look.

3Grammar and Grampa

Grams will give you cookies, as long as you know the difference between your and you’re. This is a costume for two. Grab your SO or bestie, follow this “old age” makeup tutorial, and grow old together! Gramps is done once he dons his suspenders and bifocals, but Grams will need some corrective phrases and a red pen to polish her look.

4To Kill a Mockingbird

It might be a sin to kill a mockingbird, but this costume is heavenly! See our earlier Mockingbird costume, but add a Halloween-worthy head wound! Here’s how.

5Hairy Potter

Yer an artist Hairy! Here’s some clay… Unless you’re naturally hairy, you’ll have to get a gnarly wig; the bushier, the better! Caveman costumes are good for this. Dress in your clay-covered overalls, get yourself a ceramic or clay pot and—just like magic—you’re a “Potter!”

6Thesaurus

This costume is great! Terrific! Amazing! Yeah, you get it. Initially, this one comes with a bit of investment in a good dino costume, but to complete the look all you need is a list of synonyms and some pins! Or, just walk around offering synonyms to everyone. “Your costume is scary, terrifying, horrifying, shocking . . .” A few dinosaur puns might also get you in the spirit.

This Is Why You Should Check Your Email in the Morning

Do not check your email! Plenty of people with fancy credentials will tell you to avoid your email at all costs in the morning. Time management consultant Julie Morgenstern wrote a whole book about it. She told The Huffington Post that if you give in to the temptation, “you will never recover.” Personal development writer Sid Savara gives seven reasons not to check it. For starters, the requests in your email aren’t on your agenda of “things to do” yet. If you add them to your plate, you will be distracted from the important things already on your to-do list. Do you want to lose the bliss that accompanies ignorance? On the other hand, just as many experts will tell you to check your email at the beginning of the day. Here’s what they have to say.

Why you should check email

Get it out of the way

The biggest reason to check your email in the morning is simply to get it out of the way. Lifehacker reports the personal experience of Harvard Business Review contributor Dorie Clark: “Pushing email correspondence to the end of the day, I found that I consistently avoided answering certain messages because they required hard choices that my brain found taxing. I realized that if I finally wanted to vanquish those messages straggling at the bottom of my inbox, what I needed most wasn’t simply time to respond; it was the willpower and discernment to make good judgments and respond accordingly.” She recommends setting aside twenty-minute periods throughout the day to handle email correspondence.

Train others to respect your time

Has anyone ever called you or sent you a message asking if you got their email that they sent five minutes ago? In today’s world of technology, people want things fast. But isn’t patience a virtue? When you don’t reply instantly, you might irritate others at first. However, when they receive a thoughtful reply, they might learn to appreciate your diligence. If your custom is to reply to emails in the morning, you can respond within twenty-four hours. That’s a reasonable time frame that gives you time to answer properly. Eventually, your frequent contacts will become familiar with your routine. They will see that you are too busy to be at their beck and call, but you will get back to them in due time. For real emergencies, they can call you on the telephone.

Give yourself time to cope

If you read your emails early, you have time to react. If you wait too late for an urgent email, you might miss an opportunity or not have enough time to meet a deadline. A morning review of emails prevents you from holding up others. If someone needs your reply to progress, you can help out your team productivity by doing your part as soon as possible.

You can avoid “email pressure”

According to an article in The Guardian, London researchers from Future Work Centre reported that workers feel pressured from constant streams of demanding emails. Employees who receive emails on their mobile devices via apps are even more stressed. In Germany, the problem became so concerning that the minister of employment began entertaining “anti-stress” legislation to prohibit companies from contacting employees outside of business hours in non-emergency situations. Though checking email at the beginning and end of the day had the strongest correlation with email stress, the report suggested turning off automatic notifications of new messages. If you check your account in the morning, handle the most important messages right away, and then close the app, you might find that you stay on top of your emails without feeling overwhelmed. Interestingly, personality also influenced how pressured people felt. What a psychologist and a science writer found out about the effects of willpower may surprise you.

Willpower is finite

In the book Willpower, Roy F. Baumeister and John Tierney uphold willpower as one of the greatest human feats. According to Tierney, “You only have a finite amount [of willpower] as you go through the day, so you should be careful to conserve it and try to save it for the emergencies.” How does this apply to emails? It’s easy to put off answering them if the responses require research or a long reply. Delay too long, and you seem rude. Answering the tricky ones requires willpower and you have the most of it in the morning, before you have depleted it dealing with other challenges. Perhaps you won’t have weighty replies to write every day, but when you do, the morning is a great time to address them. Tierney also says that willpower is comparable to resistance training. The more you exercise willpower, the stronger your self-control will become. Once you train yourself to handle key communications first thing in the morning, you will have the discipline to avoid spending mental energy on the time-wasters.

How to do it right

Writer Laura Chin tells us how to check emails without zapping our mental energy. The process starts before you even power up your laptop. She quotes NeuroLeadership Institute director David Rock: “If you can’t recall what your goals are, it’s unlikely you’ll be able to scan the environment for things relevant to your goals.” First, define your objectives. When you scan your email later, you will be able to zero in on important messages and make a decision how to handle each one.

Next, open your inbox. Remember these two words—discernment and willpower. Channel your top priorities as you scroll through your new emails. Use your judgment to decide which messages are most important. Open them and respond immediately or flag them as high priority. Next, use your willpower to close your browser. Anything less than critical can wait until later in the day.

Do you feel that sorting critical from unimportant drains too much of your time? Try an email organization service, such as Unroll.me, which groups low priority messages together so that you can concentrate on the important stuff. Outlook has recently implemented a similar service. It’s called focused inbox. The system responds and adapts as it observes which contacts you interact with the most. It also filters forwards, newsletters, and bulk emails into a separate tab that you can read in your leisure time. Besides automatically deleting spam, you can set “rules” to keep only the latest copy of overly frequent newsletters.

You will stress yourself out. You will get distracted from your daily objectives. You will waste too much valuable time. These are some reasons people may tell you that you should never check your email before lunchtime. However, many experts have found that clearing away important emails in the first part of the day will free up your brain for other matters. People will learn that you are busy, but you will answer within a reasonable amount of time. And you will build up your willpower as you answer only the key messages. What’s the bottom line? No one can tell you which philosophy is best because you must take into account your personality and circumstances. What time works best for your job? What method makes you feel the least stress? When do you work most productively? No one will knock your choice if you are capable and competent in your job.

Monday Motivation Hack: Tame Your To-Do List

Whether it’s a to-do list that never seems to get done, a less-than-inspired morning routine, or a tendency to get distracted (damn you, social media!), we’ve all got a hole in our productivity armor somewhere. Every Monday, we’re going to be analyzing common bad habits that could be holding you back, and we’ll offer a hack or two to help you get more quality output from your time. Our Monday Motivation Hacks will help get you into fighting shape and give you some new tactics to try out on the battlefield.

To kick off the series, let’s deal with to-do lists.

To-do lists are some of the most common, powerful, and versatile lists in the pantheon of lists. These simple lists usually focus on short-term tasks or goals, and as such they do quite a bit of heavy lifting day-to-day. However, without structure and prioritization, to-do lists easily mutate into rather useless behemoths.

How to Get Your To-Do List Working For You

While it is possible to organize a massive backlog after the fact, it is usually much more helpful to set up the framework of your to-do lists as you create them. Here are some helpful guidelines.

Good To-Do Lists Are Like Matryoshka Dolls

Often, a good to-do list comes from other to-do lists and similarly spawns more to-do lists. Before you get overwhelmed thinking about the seemingly infinite loop of list-making, keep in mind that what we’re really talking about here is the structure of your list organization—unless it’s super-short-term, they’re all nested.

For example, your weekly to-do list should inform your daily lists, and each daily list should inform the succeeding day’s list, which all informs future weeks’ lists. There can be as many “levels” to your system as necessary, but be sure it’s all prioritized.

Here’s a tip: Write your to-do list at the end of the day so you can tackle it fresh each morning.

To-Do Lists + Priorities = Killer Productivity

Taking your to-do lists from useful to essential is more than just keeping them simple and having some kind of organization. Making to-do lists integral to your process depends on your ability to prioritize and break out tasks on the list. There are a few different ways you can mix and match to impose prioritized structure onto your lists.

• Limit the number of items in your shortest-term list.
• Highlight or put your most important tasks first.
• Avoid confusing priorities on the smallest tasks by using sub-tasks.
• Set a time limit for your list (pick which items are most important during the entire day, before lunch, or within the next hour).

Schedule Your To-Do List

The icing on the cake of to-do productivity is actually translating your super-prioritized and well-structured list into slots in your calendar. Literally, all you do it schedule time in your calendar to work on the items on your to-do list. This helps you to focus when you start working on a task and prevents others from scheduling meetings during your work time.

What to-do tips would you add?

If you want to up your list game beyond the simple to-do, learn which lists are best to use for achieving goals and take our quiz to see which list you need for your project.

Monday Motivation Hack: Step Out of Your Comfort Zone

About three years ago, I decided to take a huge leap of faith. I sold almost everything I owned, packed my Toyota Sienna from floor to headliner with the stuff too precious to part with, and headed 2,000 miles west across rivers and mountains to an apartment I’d rented sight-unseen in a city I’d only ever driven past on vacation once. It’s the single scariest and best thing I’ve ever done.

Comfort zone annihilation level: expert.

There’s good news, though. You don’t have to make a cross-country move to experience the simultaneous terror and exhilaration of stepping outside your comfort zone. We’re talking about making your Mondays a little more enjoyable here, so baby steps will do.

What is a “comfort zone” and why should you challenge it?

Your comfort zone is the space you inhabit where behaviors, activities, and settings are all familiar and routine. That familiarity becomes a buffer to reduce anxiety and stress. You embrace the status quo because you feel secure there.

Here’s a tip: Status quo is Latin for the state in which. It’s been used since the early eighteenth century to mean “the current state of affairs.” The phrase usually serves as a noun, but it can also function as a phrasal adjective preceding a noun.

If comfort is a good thing (and anyone who’s spent a day in their pajamas working from home knows it is), then why are we encouraged to take risks? The idea of challenging our comfort zones dates back to a 1908 study. It showed that while being reliably comfortable produces steady performance, ramping up the anxiety level just a bit, to a place called “optimal anxiety”, maximizes it.

As tempting as it is to stick with our familiar routines, challenging yourself to push just past that state of relative ease by taking some risks is where you’ll achieve your best performance.

Four Simple Ideas for Breaking Out of Your Comfort Zone Today

If you’re ready to edge outside our comfort zone, here are a few ways to start shaking things up . . . just a little.

1 Take a different route to work.

We’re creatures of habit. Many of us follow the same, predictable path to the office each day. We don’t see much of anything new, but at least we know approximately how long the commute will take.

I make a point to take different routes whenever I go somewhere. Google Maps usually gives me a pretty solid estimate of how long the trip will take, and then I add five minutes or so to account for the unexpected. Changing my route keeps things interesting. Bonus: I know at least six different ways to get almost anywhere around my city.

via GIPHY

2 Take a risk-taker out for coffee.

Is there someone in your life—a family member, colleague, or friend—who’s adept at taking risks? Challenge yourself to take that person out for coffee with the goal of asking them about their gutsy lifestyle. Ask them what drives them to color outside the lines, and how they cope with their fears.

Change is unnerving. We all need a little encouragement from time to time. Most risk-takers will enjoy taking a neophyte under their wing and showing them how to stretch their boundaries. When you’re trying to challenge yourself, it’s good to have someone in your corner urging you on.

3 Sign up for a class and learn something creative.

Creativity equals risk-taking. Creative people fail, and the most creative people fail all the time. You don’t think Picasso always painted masterpieces, or that J.K. Rowling wrote the Harry Potter series without a single rewrite, do you?

Think of a creative pursuit that’s always fascinated you and take time on your lunch break to look around for classes. Maybe you’ve always wanted to learn how to use your expensive DSLR camera outside of auto mode. Or it could be you’d like to get your hands dirty throwing a ceramic pot. Your thespian side may long for an improv class. Face your fears and dive in!

4 Learn a language.

Learning a new language can be fun, and the process has many cognitive advantages. With apps like Duolingo and Babbel in your corner, it’s also easy. Sure, trying to learn something new can be a little scary, and trying to speak a new language when you’re still struggling to wrap your tongue around foreign sounds is unnerving, but the benefits are clear.

Comfort is overrated.

Looking back on our lives, we rarely regret the risks we’ve taken; we only regret the ones we didn’t. Comfort kills. It leads to apathy and boredom. It strips away our motivation.

Getting outside your comfort zone is not a means to an end, but rather a goal in itself. As soon as you choose to leave your comfort zone, you form a direct friction with life, go towards the pursuit of your dreams, and in short, really start living.

—Ran Zilca for Psychology Today

So, this Monday, go ahead and shake things up a little. There’s no reward without the risk.

When to Use Accept vs. Except

• Accept means to agree or to receive something offered.
• Except means excluding or with the exception of.
• The ex- of except can help you to remember that it means excluding.

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Do you have trouble remembering when to use accept and when to use except? Learn how these two words differ and how they function.

When to use Accept

Accept is a verb. Accept means to agree or to take something offered.

When Bob asked Sally to marry him, she happily accepted.

The dog likes all vegetables, accept lettuce.

When to use Except

Except usually functions as a preposition or a conjunction. As a preposition, except means “but.” As a conjunction, except is often followed by “that,” and it means “only” or “with the exception of.” In the rare cases that except functions as a verb, it means “to exclude, to object.”

All the classmates except William attended the reunion .

Paula excepts her daughter calling her by her first name.

Will you except my gift?

How to Remember the Difference between Accept and Except

If you are a good speller, here is an easy trick to distinguish accept from except. Remember that the first two letters of except give a clue to its meaning. Except means to exclude.

Examples

I was never really insane except upon occasions when my heart was touched.

Edgar Allan Poe

We accept the love we think we deserve.

Stephen Chbosky, The Perks of Being a Wallflower