7 Books That Will Help You Land Your First Job

Graduation. Ten letters that spell either “opportunity,” or “pure, unadulterated terror,” depending on your plans for after you walk across the stage and officially become a college grad. If you have your post-grad life figured out, congratulations! You’re ahead of the game. Kick back, read a book, and wait for real life to hit you.

But if you have no idea what you’re going to do, or are hustling to land that first gig, don’t worry. We’ve all been there. While career planning can be maddening, you will get through this intermediary period and arise from the ashes of your college career like a glorious, mature phoenix.

You’ve got this.

Since books can often help you get through the slog of job hunting and career planning, we partnered with Textbooks.com to create a reading list for college grads. Here are a few books that will help you land that gig as a designer, engineer, teacher, fortune cookie writer, or whatever it is you’ve decided to be.

1 What Color Is Your Parachute? 2017

Often considered one of the classic job search books, What Color Is Your Parachute? is updated annually to provide the most up-to-date information to job seekers. This book’s combination of current tactics and age-old advice makes this a must-read for anyone engaged in a long or difficult job search.

2 The 2-Hour Job Search

Although Parachute is a classic, it has been criticized for its more traditional approach to job hunting. The 2-Hour Job Search is the exact opposite. This manual for the Internet age of job hunting will help you navigate the online jobscape in a manageable way. Although you may take more than two hours to land an interview, the tips in this book are solid.

3 Welcome to the Real World

Lauren Berger has gained widespread fame as The Intern Queen, and her first work of nonfiction is just as practical and down-to-earth as the section of her blog by the same name. This sizeable tome covers everything from time management to angling for a promotion and will prove invaluable once you land your first gig.

4 Congratulations, by the Way

When you reach the point in your job search where you’ve sent in one too many cover letters, updated your resume for the millionth time, and just need a break, take heart—we’ve all been there. George Saunders’ advice to the class of 2013 can help you push through. His short but powerful speech on kindness can put even the most stressful of life’s transitions in context. Here’s a taste of his refreshing prose:

There’s a confusion in each of us, a sickness, really: selfishness. But there’s also a cure. So be a good and proactive and even somewhat desperate patient on your own behalf — seek out the most efficacious anti-selfishness medicines, energetically, for the rest of your life.

5 Now What?

Not sure what career path you want to take? Check out this manual for finding your passion and pursuing it. Now What? presents a no-nonsense approach to finding your (employable) passion, which can be helpful for recent grads awash in feel-good career advice.

6 The Complete Q&A Job Interview Book

If you need more practical interview tips, this compendium of questions and answers can be your guide. Come for the example questions and answers, stay for the truth bombs about proper interview etiquette.

Here’s a tip: Need help writing emails before and after your interview? We have a guide for that.

7 The Elements of Resume Style

Your campus career services can only take your resume so far. If you need detailed information on resume formats for your field, this Strunk and White–esque guide is where it’s at. Need something a little shorter? We also have a few blogs you can use to get your resume in fighting shape.

Have you read a book that changed your perspective on your career after graduation? Share it in the comments below!

Here Are the Top 10 Writing Mistakes of 2016

Of the three billion or so people on Earth who enjoy web access, roughly half speak – and write – mainly in English. If they’re at all like a typical Grammarly user, they crank out around a thousand words each week, mainly in email, social media, blogs, and the like.

One other thing folks writing on the Internet do a good bit of is make mistakes. We routinely mangle proper spellings, savage the rules of punctuation, email sensitive details to the wrong person, and mix up words – say by referring to an ambidextrous baseball pitcher as “amphibious” while hurriedly dashing off a newspaper headline.

Because Grammarly helps users avoid unforced errors on the web, we’ve had front-row seats to observe, tally, and correct tens of millions of mistakes online. Of those that people frequently stumbled over in 2016, here are the ten most common.

10 Altogether

Altogether is easily mistaken for all together, but the two are far from interchangeable. Altogether is an adverb meaning completely, whereas all together refers to several parts of a group being united.

It’s altogether clear that we’re all together in the need of straightening this matter out. More details and examples are all together right here.

9 Nowadays

It’s one word, meaning “these days” or “in current times” – as in contrast to the past. Also, it shouldn’t be mistaken for now days, now a days, or now adays.

Indeed, if your first instinct on glancing at nowadays is that it should be two words, take solace in the knowledge that it used to be, back in the 14th century, when it was nou adayes. Still, nowadays it’s just one, and that’s worth getting right.

8 Wouldn’t of vs. Wouldn’t have

This wouldn’t have been such a recurring problem, except, well – maybe it shouldn’t have been so confusing in the first place.

The key to getting this one straight is to remember there is no correct would of – and no could of or should of, for that matter. So couldn’t of simply couldn’t have ever been correct.

We could have and should have gotten it right, and knowing this, we will. (More help, should you need it, is on our blog.)

7 Verbing

Using nouns as verbs – to phone someone, to friend them on social media, to plate a nice dinner for them – is verbing, and while it’s very common, in the wrong context it can seem overly casual and out of place, like a visiting uncle wearing a bathrobe to Thanksgiving. In formal writing, it’s best to instead find a common verb that conveys your meaning.

We’ve blogged a time or two about verbing ourselves, you know.

6 Won’t vs. Wont

These two are easily mixed up, and the confusion is made worse by the fact that wont, while often erroneously taken in place of won’t, is itself a perfectly legitimate word in English that isn’t always easy to recognize as a mistake.

As an adjective, wont means inclined or accustomed, as in “She was wont to work late into the night.” As a noun, wont refers to typical behavior in a given situation: “His wont over the holidays is to cook an elaborate feast.”

It may also be helpful to know that won’t is a contraction of an archaic version of “will not” that’s no longer in use: “I wol not.” The Middle English author Geoffrey Chaucer offers examples in The Canterbury Tales like “I wol not lie” and “I wol not do no labour with myn hondes.”

Because it’s a contraction, shortening will not (or wol not) means replacing the middle part with an apostrophe – hence, won’t. You may have been wont to confuse the matter before, but you won’t make that mistake again.

5Who vs. Whom

There’s one key to using these two in their proper places: whom is always the object of a verb or proposition, as in John Donne’s poem “For Whom the Bell Tolls,” which was subsequently taken for the title of a novel by Ernest Hemingway. The bell is tolling for someone, but for whom?

Who, on the other hand, is correct as a subject. For instance, “Who sent these flowers? I don’t know whom to thank for the thoughtful surprise!”

Check here for lots more helpful tricks on this rule.

4 Commas

Ah, the pesky comma. Given the multitude of ways comma usage can go wrong, it may be unsurprising so many people get tripped up over it.

In some instances, a misplaced comma simply makes an ordinary sentence feel stilted, like an awkward pause in the middle of a thought. Other times – like when several items are being listed in a row – a misplaced comma can radically alter the whole meaning of the sentence, as in this example:

“Her vacation photos included shots of my sister, a champion kickboxer and a baboon.”

Your sister might not appreciate that, and if she’s as good a fighter as you say, you’ll want to be wary. We’ve got you covered with helpful pointers to avoid this kind of debacle right here.

3 Hyphen

Hyphens are tricky. So much so that in the past we’ve noted that even editors sometimes struggle to get them right. There are several ways for hyphens to go astray (and we have tips for all of them), but the most frequent offender is the compound adjective.

Compound adjectives occur when two or more words work together to modify a noun, as in “For her birthday, she asked him for one of the most sought-after toys.” Neither “sought” nor “after” makes sense on its own as an adjective in that sentence, so they function together as a single compound adjective, and thus need a hyphen.

That said, you have to be on the watch for adverbs, which require no hyphen. An example is “Such highly desirable toys were all but forgotten a few short months later.” Here, “highly” is an adverb modifying “desirable,” which could work just fine as an adjective on its own, meaning no hyphen is necessary.

That should make honing your compound-adjective-usage skills a little easier.

2 Preposition

Many writers struggle with prepositions – little words that tell you where or when something is, like in, on, above, below and so forth. But while their multifarious uses can seem daunting, prepositions are essential to many of the best things in life. Here are a few examples:

• Prepositions allow us to relate to waffles, e.g., sitting in front of them, putting syrup on them, saving them for Saturday, etc.
• Prepositions are also crucial to any movie trailer that begins with the words, “In a world…”
• Do you listen to music in the car, on the radio? Maybe you check out reviews in magazines. Or perhaps you’d rather be at the library. Wherever you go, prepositions abound.

1 Nowhere and Anywhere

In 2016, we frequently observed writers inserting spaces in the middle of nowhere and anywhere. But both of these words are legitimate examples of indefinite pronouns, no spaces required.

As indefinite pronouns, nowhere and anywhere don’t refer to specific places. If there’s nowhere you’d rather be, it means there are zero particular places you’d refer to. You can think of these indefinite pronouns as part of a continuum that also includes somewhere and everywhere – two other examples that don’t require spaces, either.

Also, these words have cousins that refer to people (anybody or nobody) as well as objects (nothing and anything).

Whatever the object of your writing, saying it well and using the right words and punctuation is a worthy endeavor that will help you look sharp.

What do you think about gender-neutral pronouns? Take our weekly poll!

Gender-neutral pronouns are nouns that stand in for one’s name but do not reflect the sex of the referenced person. In contrast, he, she, him, her, his, hers, etc. are gendered pronouns, reflecting the sex of the referenced person. Many gender activists and even some linguists argue that plural gender-neutral pronouns — like they, them, their — are not acceptable substitutes for the unwieldy ‘his or her’, ‘he or she’ and ‘himself or herself’ constructions. There have been some attempts to create gender-neutral pronouns. But do we need them? Tell us what you think in the comments!

Do you want more polls? You can take last week’s poll.

 

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June is Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) Pride Month. Celebrate human rights, tolerance, and equality with us throughout the month! #PrideMonth

Grammar Basics: What Is the Perfect Form of “Be”?

Many of the most commonly used nouns have irregular conjugations in the past simple and perfect forms. “To be” is one of these. Learn more about perfect forms.

To learn more about grammar and to help us celebrate National Grammar Day this March, visit our new resource page.

Should Web Writing Be Formal or Informal?

By Anne Wayman

Recently a reader of my writing blog asked the following (edited for clarity):

What’s your opinion about using you instead of one when you’re writing for the web or for magazines? Some experts, including Grammarly, say it should beone. I think using you is more engaging.

Thanks, Irene.

Here’s how I expect to answer her:

Irene, I agree, generally informal writing is more engaging than formal writing. Let me set up an example to make this clear.

A sentence like this is formal:

When addressing the public one ought to speak more slowly than one ordinarily talks.

You and I would probably write that sentence like this:

When you talk to the public you ought to speak more slowly than you usually speak.

And indeed Grammarly does flag the use of you in this example as “personal” and advises that formal writing requires a more impersonal approach. It suggests either rephrasing to avoid the pronoun or to substitute one for you.

But notice, that suggestion is only if the writing is to be formal.

So what is formal writing?

Richard Nordquist, About.com’s guide to grammar and usage defines formal writing this way:

“A broad term for speech or writing marked by an impersonal, objective, and precise use of language. A formal prose style is typically used in scholarly books and articles, technical reports, research papers, and legal documents. . .”

So, if you’re writing scholarly books and articles, or technical papers, maybe the impersonal, formal approach is better. But I wonder. Objective and precise use of language is often necessary even in informal writing—I aim for that when I’m talking about freelance writing in my blogs.

I poked around to see if I could find a blog that used formal language. It turns out The Atlantic magazine is incorporating academic blogs onto its site—not for their use of language, but as a better approach to understanding science. It seemed like a place to start looking at the language bloggers use.

Senior Editor Alexis Madrigal said there: “I’m looking for researchers, scholars, and academics who don’t post more than once per day.” He gives eight examples of blogs he thinks are, to use his term, exemplary. I glanced at all eight (I realized if I did more than that I’d be reading those blogs all day, as it is a fascinating group).

None of the blogs used what I would consider stiff, formal language. The web version of JAMA, the peer reviewed Journal of the American Medical Association, is using a more formal language than I do on my blog. But it’s eminently readable. Even the opinions rendered by our Supreme Court are pretty readable once you get past the Latin and the way they cite other law.

I’ve started finding examples of academic, legal, and other kinds of writing that might be considered formal – and then defining them as readable or not. I suspect that’s actually a more important question and goal for a writer than becoming too concerned about formal and informal language or personal and impersonal pronouns.

My hunch, too, is that over the last decade or so all writing, including formal writing, has become more informal. While some might lament the lack of rules and structure in much of today’s writing I like it – as long as it communicates clearly, accurately, and completely.

How do you distinguish between formal and informal language? When do you use formal writing? When do you use informal writing?

Anne Wayman has been writing for well over 30 years now, and blogging about freelance writing for more than a decade. With a partner she recently launched AboutWritingSquared.com, home of the 5 Buck Forum, the supportive forum for writers.