This poll is part of a series that Grammarly is running aimed at better understanding how the public feels about writing, language learning, and grammar.
Please take the poll and share your thoughts in the comments. We can’t wait to hear from you!
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Like birthdays, Christmas, and Hanukkah, Father’s Day can be rough. Yes, it is a great opportunity to recognize our fathers (and father figures) for their profound impact in our lives, but it is also a time when many of us feel tongue-tied.
How can we tell dad exactly what he means to us in a simple card or letter? Here are five tips for writing the perfect note to dad in honor of Father’s Day:
Share important memories.
Father’s Day is more than just a reminder that you love your dad. It’s a time to recall the best memories you have with him, a day to really show him that he has made a difference in your life. A powerful way to do this is to recall great memories you have with your dad and write about them. Spend some time to paint a vivid picture of that one great day with dad that you will never forget.
Write from the heart.
Whatever you write, make sure it comes from your heart. That is to say, if you are not the sentimental type but you have a great sense of humor, there is no reason to force deep thoughts on to the page. Hit your dad with your best jokes, the ones that he will really appreciate. On the other hand, if you tend to write flowery prose but you aren’t great at stand-up comedy, don’t try to be overly witty.
When writing the perfect Father’s Day message, the old adage “write what you know” is key to success. Your dad knows your voice and style—he’s probably read your work before. And better yet, he knows and loves you. Stick with what you do, and who you are, and the message will be genuine.
Be honest.
Tell your dad exactly what you really want to say. Don’t be afraid that saying “I love you” is too cliché. Don’t worry that telling your dad, “You’ve always been there for me” is cheesy. Sometimes, keeping it simple and straightforward is the best way to approach a note to dad. If, “Thank you for always being there,” is what you want to say, then say it and say it just like that. You can always expand on this idea later.
Remember that mixed sentiments are not mixed messages.
You can combine different sentiments within the same message. For example, you can mention a touching idea alongside a humorous anecdote. Something like, “Dad, thank you so much for always being there for me…like that one time I ran over an orange cone and we had to use a crowbar to get it out of the wheel well!
For inspiration, here is a list of clever, witty, and touching Father’s Day sentiments.
Say thank you.
Regardless of what else you say in your piece, say thank you to your dad. After all, whether your sentiment is “you have always been there,” “you have given me wisdom,” or “you have always fought for me,” what you really are saying is “thanks for being there,” “thanks for your advice,” or “thanks for fighting for me.” Your father will appreciate being thanked.
Writing the perfect Father’s Day message is a lot harder than it seems. The basic ideas you want to convey, however, are pretty straightforward. And, if you speak from the heart, you’ll rarely go wrong.
What are some of your favorite Father’s Day messages? Share more tips and links in the comments below!
Do you enjoy team sports? Some team positions carry special responsibilities. In hockey, the goalie’s job is to block the other team from scoring. In American football, the place holder steadies the football for the field goal kicker. If you imagine language as a team sport, you can think of grammatical cases as team positions. They tell you the special roles of pronouns. Only three cases are common in modern English—subjective, objective, and possessive.
When a pronoun is the subject of a clause or sentence, it is in the subjective case. Therefore, the pronouns I, you, he, she, it, we, they, and who are subjective case pronouns.
Pronouns that serve as objects of verbs or prepositions are in the objective case: me, you, him, her, it, us, them, and whom.
With nouns, you usually indicate possession by adding an apostrophe and the letter S (or just an apostrophe, in the case of most plural nouns). Pronouns demonstrate possession by using possessive case forms. There are two types of possessive pronouns. Possessive determiners (my, your, his, her, its, our, their, whose) and absolute possessive pronouns (mine, yours, his, hers, ours, and theirs).
Did you notice that some of the pronouns appear in more than one case? Just as an athlete might enjoy more than one sport, pronouns can be versatile too. It’s interesting to learn about the different ways individual members contribute to the team, and it’s cool to know the grammatical cases!
Rules are rules, and they exist for a reason. They create order and minimize uncertainty. They are necessary because nothing would work without them. But some people don’t seem to understand that.
They don’t understand why it’s bad to split your infinitives, or why you shouldn’t start a sentence with a conjunction, or why you can’t end it with a preposition. Some people just don’t care. Some people just want to watch the world burn, fuelled by the misuse of “good” for “well,” and “while” for “though.” But if the world really depends on people adhering to those strict and sometimes obscure grammar rules, it might as well burn. Because all of the pedantic rules mentioned above are wrong. Forget everything you know, grammar pedant, because it’s all a lie.
Okay, so maybe the world won’t burn, and maybe not everything you know about grammar is a lie. A lot of it might be, though. Some grammar rules are simply myths with little to no basis in how the language is actually used. Other grammar rules aren’t applicable across the whole spectrum of English subtypes and dialects. And there are rules with so many exceptions that they probably shouldn’t be called rules.
Take the myth about ending sentences with a preposition, for example. We know exactly who to blame for this little superstition. John Dryden, a seventeenth-century British poet, was the person who came up with this “rule.” Robert Lowth, a bishop in the Church of England and a composer of prescriptive grammar textbooks, is often blamed for perpetuating the myth, but in fact he said quite clearly that avoiding a sentence-ending preposition is a matter of style, not grammar. Why did Dryden and Lowth do this? Well, they were men of their time, and in their time it was very popular to force English to follow the the rules of another language. That other language was, you guessed it, Latin. It’s true, you can’t end a sentence with a preposition in Latin. But it’s a common and correct construction in English.
The prohibition against splitting infinitives is another one that seems to have sprung from a fondness for applying Latin grammar rules to English. In English, splitting an infinitive means inserting an adverb between “to” and the uninflected form of a verb (e.g., “to boldly go”). Latin doesn’t have split infinitives because in Latin an infinitive is a single word. But in English, rigidly avoiding split infinitives can change the meaning of your sentence or make it more difficult to understand. So go ahead and split an infinitive when you need to, Latin be damned.
Another of these hobgoblins is the supposed rule that you can’t start a sentence with a conjunction. Starting too many sentences with conjunctions will make your writing awkward, for sure, but never doing it? It’s overkill. Conjunctions glue the elements of your writing together. These elements might be words or clauses. But they can also be sentences.
The rules governing the use of “that” and “which” are also a bit shaky. The rule says that we should use “that” for restrictive relative clauses and save “which” for nonrestrictive relative clauses. This rule is sort of half-true, because using “that” for nonrestrictive relative clauses does sound a bit awkward. But the part of the rule that says you can’t use “which” for restrictive relative clauses is, well, not a good rule. You can do it, and there are situations when it’s the only choice you can make.
The point is that you shouldn’t blindly follow every prescriptive rule you come across without a second thought. Following these rules in formal writing and speaking might do you some good—people believe they’re true, remember—but in your everyday communication, you don’t have to worry about splitting infinitives or starting sentences with conjunctions. You can sometimes even let your modifiers dangle.
There are plenty of real rules to worry about, after all. Do you know the proper order of adjectives, for example? You probably wouldn’t be able to recite it off the top of your head, but if you use more than one adjective to describe something, you will intuitively arrange them in a way that just sounds good. You will say that something is big or small before you say which color it is. You will say that something is new or old before you say it’s French or British or Ugandan. There are plenty of rules you use you’re not even aware of. So relax, grammar pedant. Sit back, grab some marshmallows, and enjoy the fire if you think it’s there.
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.
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.
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.
If you’re ready to edge outside our comfort zone, here are a few ways to start shaking things up . . . just a little.
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
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.
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!
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.
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.
Grammar is important, but it’s not a matter of life or death. Or is it? How does grammar influence the legal system? Researchers decided to find out by conducting an experiment. Does the wording of the description of a murder affect whether jurors classify a crime as first- or second-degree murder? According to their findings, “legal judgments can be affected by grammatical aspect but [most significantly] limited to temporal dynamics… In addition, findings demonstrate that the influence of grammatical aspect on situation model construction and evaluation is dependent upon the larger linguistic and semantic context.” In other words, grammar plays a part, but the study participants also paid attention to context when making their decisions. Is grammar as significant in real-life legal cases?
For Avondale Lockhart, whether or not he would spend the next ten years of his life in prison came down to a question of grammar. Federal law requires a minimum ten-year sentence for repeat sexual offenders convicted of “aggravated sexual abuse, sexual abuse, or abusive sexual conduct involving a minor or ward.” How would you interpret the phrase? Does “involving a minor or ward” apply only to the part of the sentence immediately preceding it (abusive sexual conduct) or does it apply to all the crimes listed? Lockhart, previously convicted of attempted rape, contended that because his previous crime wasn’t against a minor, the minimum 10-year sentence did not apply to him.
In Canada, a cable television provider and a telecommunications company disputed the import of a single comma in their contract. Bell Aliant, the telephone company, wanted to cancel their contract with Rogers Communication. This is the sentence in question:”This agreement shall be effective from the date it is made and shall continue in force for a period of five (5) years from the date it is made, and thereafter for successive five (5) year terms, unless and until terminated by one year prior notice in writing by either party.” How do you understand the sentence? Does Bell Aliant have the right to cancel the contract at any time, provided they give one-year notice? Or does the one-year notice apply to cancellations enacted after the first five-year term? The difference amounts to about $900,000 US dollars.
How well can you explain the passive voice and the subjunctive mood? In an article published by the Loyola University Chicago Law Journal, law professor Robert C. Farrell observes that “there is widespread unfamiliarity among lawyers and law students with the terminology that describes verb forms.” In most contexts, this doesn’t matter. Native speakers use and understand grammar constructs instinctively, even if they cannot explain why saying something in a certain way is correct. However, in “a small percentage of cases, including some important ones, courts explicitly rely on grammatical terminology to explain their decisions.” If law students aren’t familiar with the classifications of grammar, how will they respond to arguments based on grammatical interpretation? The article highlights one case where grammar played a life-or-death role. In 1995, a jury convicted Michael Kelly Roberts of aggravated premeditated first-degree murder and first-degree felony murder. He received a death sentence for the crimes. Did the jury really have the authority to issue a capital punishment? Notice the passive voice in this phrase from their instructions that defines aggravated first-degree murder: “[when the] murder was committed in the course of, in furtherance of, or in immediate flight from, a robbery … or a kidnapping.” According to Robert’s defense, the use of passive voice mistakenly conveyed the impression that a death penalty could be applied to the accused even if he was not an active or major participant in the illegal events. Because there was another man involved, no one could say who had actually committed the murder.
Are you wondering about the verdicts of the cases mentioned? In the case of Avondale Lockhart, the Court applied the “rule of the last antecedent,” which states that “a limiting clause or phrase . . . should ordinarily be read as modifying only the noun or phrase that it immediately follows.” While the rule can be overruled by other “indica of meaning,” the Court found nothing to indicate that it should be reversed in this case. Lockhart received the minimum ten-year sentence. The Canadian telephone pole contract dilemma reached a resolution when Rogers Communications presented the French version of the same contract. The wording in the French contract was clear enough that the court reversed an earlier decision allowing Bell Aliant to terminate the contract before the end of the five-year term. As for Michael Kelly Roberts, the courts vacated his death sentence and reversed his conviction of first-degree murder. His first-degree felony murder conviction was upheld. How did the rulings match your interpretations of the legal language?
Email correspondence makes it simple, easy, and convenient to quickly contact coworkers and family members across the world. However, it isn’t all roses with email. If you don’t follow proper etiquette, you can end up annoying your recipients. You’ve probably already heard about basic email etiquette tips, like using a specific subject line and replying as quickly as you can, but there is more you can do to ensure that your emails resonate with the people you send them to.
Don’t Be Sorry to Bother Someone
When you start an email with “sorry to bother you,” chances are that the recipient already feels bothered by that opening line. Those four words take seconds to read, seconds that the person could have used to find out the real point of your email. Furthermore, if you are sending a business email, you should never apologize for asking someone to do their job. You want to be polite, not obsequious.
Be Small-Screen Friendly
Email is not the exclusive to desktop computers and laptops. People are always on the go, and they read their emails on mobile phones and tablets. It isn’t easy to read long blocks of text on a tiny screen. Keep that in mind when you’re composing your messages. Keep your paragraphs short and your message brief. If you must send a longer message, give a succinct summary near the beginning of the email so the recipient knows what’s in store and can go back to read the rest later.
Also, think about the font you use. Some artsy fonts may look fabulous on a computer screen, but they could strain the eyes on a mobile screen.
Think Before You CC
A blogger for Lifehack describes being copied on emails: “I’d say about 90% of messages I’ve received where I’m not in the To: field but the CC: field were completely and totally useless to me.” Indeed, oftentimes those emails, intended to keep people in the loop, just end up being irritating white noise in the inbox.
This doesn’t mean you should never CC anyone, but you should carefully consider who exactly needs the information you’re about to send.
Use BCC for Bulk Mail
Want to use email to invite the universe to your upcoming party? Maybe you want to share your vacation photos with a long list of people. Whatever the reason, don’t paste a novel-length block of email addresses at the top of a message. BCC everyone in your list. This also respects the privacy of your recipients, which is especially helpful if not everyone who receives the email knows each other.
Do Not Overload on Cuteness
Fancy graphics and fonts do not look good on all browsers and devices and can make an email difficult to read. If you cannot resist the urge to embellish, use small adorable touches that add character but don’t overwhelm a message.
Along the same lines, if you are sending photographs, it’s better to send them as an attachment rather than in the body of an email, so the email itself doesn’t take a billion years to load.
Stick to Your Grammar Guns
Email is not as formal as a handwritten letter, but you should still respect the English language. Capitalize when needed, use punctuation, and give all your emails a read-through before you hit the send button. This applies to both business and personal emails.
Email isn’t complicated, but there are some rules you need to follow to get the most out of it. Did any of these tips surprise you?
