Eight Christmas Grammar Mistakes That Will Make You Think

How many times have you seen “Happy Holidays from the Jones’s” or “Mary Christmas” in a Christmas card?

When you’re working through a stack of Christmas cards, it can be difficult to cross your t’s and dot your i’s, let alone remember a series of seemingly random holiday-related grammar rules. So, in the spirit of holiday giving, we’re giving you eight Christmas grammar tips for LitMas. Let us know how we did in the comments below!

1 Correctly Pluralize Your Family Name

Source: Country Living

Let’s start with the obvious misstep we see every year on at least one holiday card or Christmas letter: the dreaded surname plural. It can be difficult to keep your plurals and possessives apart, especially if your surname ends in an s! So check out this handy guide from our handbook to keep your possessives in check.

2 Double-Check Your Holiday Homonyms

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If you’re writing quickly, you might be more likely to misspell things you would normally catch. Here’s a list of common holiday homonyms to avoid:

1. Mary Christmas → Merry Christmas 2. Happy Holiday → Happy Holidays 3. Mold wine → Mulled wine 4. Satan Claus → Santa Claus 5. Old Lang Zyne → Auld Lang Syne

3 Remember Your I vs. Me Manners

BOOM! Merry Christmas from President Barack Obama, First Lady Michelle Obama and I…. http://t.co/dbv5CJSh

— Piers Morgan (@piersmorgan) December 14, 2012

We understand. When typing quickly, it can be difficult to remember when to use I and me when including yourself in a list. Luckily, it’s not that hard once you know the rule for these two pronouns, which you can read about in this guide.

4 Don’t Welcome Wordiness Into Your Greetings

Writing the perfect holiday card or letter updating your family and friends on the events of the last year is an art, not a science. But if you err on the side of brevity, your loved ones will thank you! Try to cut unnecessary descriptors and introductory text in favor of an action-packed account of only the most important parts of the last year. And if you need more help, check out our guide to holiday greetings.

5 Don’t Turn Into the Comma Grinch

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In case you don’t know the plot of The Grinch Who Stole Christmas, it involves the theft of an entire town’s Christmas presents. When you’re writing things around the holidays (or at any time of the year), don’t steal extra commas! Try to cut commas from your writing where possible, instead of hoarding all the commas to yourself.

6 Use Apostrophes in Your Greetings

Too much relaxing time on my hands to notice grammar fail on @Tesco Christmas bags… pic.twitter.com/9xx2adThNk

— Sarah Marl (@SarahMarl) December 21, 2015

Yes, this is a duplicate of our first entry on this list. But apostrophe use is as important as it is difficult! Remember, even if it’s not a name you’re trying to make into a plural, you should never, ever use an apostrophe.

7 Don’t Follow Santa’s Bad Example

Usually, Santa is a source of joy for children and grammar nerds alike. But the “you better” lyrics in “Santa Claus Is Comin’ to Town” are enough to land him on the naughty grammar list for life. To set the record straight, this phrase should be “you’d better,” as in “you had better.” You had better avoid this construction in your next important email, unless you would like to delight the office grammar pedant!

8 Tame Your Inner Pedant During the Holidays

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If you are your office’s, family’s, or friend group’s resident grammar pedant, here’s a plea from fellow grammar nerds: give it a rest over the holidays. Even if Aunt Maple wishes you a “Happy New Years” or Great Uncle Merle thinks “Happy Holiday from the Smith’s” is a great way to sign a card, we should cut each other a little slack during the most wonderful time of the year. Practice restraint with your grammar criticism now, and you might be able to make a lasting impact if you restart your “helpful suggestions” during New Year’s resolution season.

Most Common GrammoWriMo Mistakes

In November, Grammarly worked with ~300 writers from 27 countries (and 44 U.S. states) to write a group novel for National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo). We called the project #GrammoWriMo; and, clocking in at a total of 130,927 unedited words, we are proud to say that our draft was among the 41,940 completed! The infographic below shows which mistakes were the most common in our writers’ first drafts.

To embed it into a blog post, paste the following HTML snippet into your web editor:

Hyphens: The Punctuation Mark That Even Editors Can’t Get Right

It stalks the thick jungles of prose, confounding even the most experienced grammar explorer or navigator, yet it’s a gentle, mistaken, and forlorn creature. What am I talking about? The hyphen—the piece of punctuation that not even seasoned editors can seem to get right.

Super high-profile ad agencies and industry giants, despite large budgets and an intelligent workforce, are known to make hyphen mistake after mistake, unable to get a handle on correct hyphen usage. I’m looking at you, Netflix, with a hyphen error right on the main page!

Thankfully, most hyphen usage falls into a few different categories:

• Compound adjectives (but no -ly endings because those are adverbs!)
• Numbers and fractions
• Specific prefixes
• Preventing confusion

Compound Adjective

The most important breed of hyphen to know is the one associated with compound adjectives, which are single adjectives made up of more than one word. Because both words go hand-in-hand to modify the same noun, a hyphen is used to show they are linked. The important part to keep in mind is that all words in the compound adjective are equally important. For example, “high-priced items” would not make sense as “high items” or “priced items.”

Beware of Adverbs!

While closely related to adjectives in the sense that they’re another kind of modifier, adverbs inherently imply subordination to the word that follows.

Critically-acclaimed movies

The above is incorrect because “critically” is providing context for “acclaimed,” and “acclaimed” is describing the movies. “Acclaimed” is a verb, and that’s why the adverb “critically” is referring to it exclusively and not the nonverb “movies.”

Search -ly Endings

The quick trick to knowing whether to hyphenate compound modifiers without sorting out adverbs vs. adjectives is to look for words ending in -ly. This will (most of the time) indicate an adverb rather than an adjective and, thus, no hyphen.

Exception: Some nouns end in -ly, so be mindful of what hyphens you leave off. For example “family-owned business” should retain the hyphen after “family” despite the -ly because “family” is a noun.

Numbers and Fractions

Of the hyphen family, these are perhaps the easiest to classify and implement. Numbers twenty-one through ninety-nine get hyphenated.

Twenty-seven Four hundred and thirty-five

Fractions also get hyphenated.

Three-fifths

When describing ages, hyphenate the age only when it’s used as an adjective before a noun.

The child playing with her toys was five years old. The five-year-old child played with her toys.

Specific Prefixes

A prefix is a modifier placed before a word to alter or enhance its meaning. The prefixes “self-,” “ex-,” and “all-,” almost always need a hyphen between them and the words they’re modifying.

Self-absorbed Ex-husband

However, not all prefixes use hyphens.

Re-place Un-happy

In addition, be sure to break up double vowels between a prefix and a root word unless your spelling checker flags them as incorrect with a hyphen.

Re-enter Coordinate

Preventing Confusion

The hardest hyphen breed to capture, and certainly the most difficult to tame, is the one used to prevent confusion, often with a group of three or more words that contains either multiple modifiers or a noun that’s made up of two or more words.

Consider the phrase “two dollar bills”: Does it indicate multiple bills of the $2 denomination, or is it two bills of the $1 denomination? Does the phrase “twenty odd people” refer to twenty people who are strange or a group of people with about twenty in attendance?

See also this article about one author’s thoughts about the flying purple people eater. The world will perhaps never know exactly what this creature looked like or ate.

The hyphen makes the distinction for you.

And, finally, consider this interesting and slightly unfortunate story about the word “re-sent.” Without the hyphen, it reads as “resent,” which is certainly not the intended sentiment. Even though “re-” is not a prefix that typically gets hyphenated, the hyphen in this case provides an important clarification.

Have you seen any embarrassing hyphen mistakes or made any of your own?

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Amanda Edens is an editor and content marketer with a wide range of talents from management to design. Check out her blog at www.askyoureditor.com or follow her on twitter @askyoureditor.

Present Perfect Tense

The present perfect tense refers to an action or state that either occurred at an indefinite time in the past (e.g., we have talked before) or began in the past and continued to the present time (e.g., he has grown impatient over the last hour). This tense is formed by have/has + the past participle.

The construction of this verb tense is straightforward. The first element is have or has, depending on the subject the verb is conjugated with. The second element is the past participle of the verb, which is usually formed by adding -ed or -d to the verb’s root (e.g., walked, cleaned, typed, perambulated, jumped, laughed, sautéed) although English does have quite a few verbs that have irregular past participles (e.g., done, said, gone, known, won, thought, felt, eaten).

These examples show how the present perfect can describe something that occurred or was the state of things at an unspecified time in the past.

I have walked on this path before.

We have eaten the lasagna here.

The important thing to remember about the present perfect is that you can’t use it when you are being specific about when it happened.

I have put away all the laundry.

I have put away all the laundry this morning.

You can use the present perfect to talk about the duration of something that started in the past is still happening.

She has had the chickenpox since Tuesday.

How to Write Better Cover Letters

Imagine, for a minute, that you’re an employer. You need to fill a position and you receive hundreds of applications every day. You’ve deleted the ones from senders like cutie143@email.com, the ones with misspellings in the subject line or email body, and the ones that sound like generic templates.

Then you read a cover letter that shows knowledge of the position, skill fit, proper grammar and spelling, and enthusiasm. Finally, you’ve found a potential candidate. So what’s in that cover letter? Writing better cover letters requires time, research, a mindset switch, and deliberate word choice. Read on to write your way to a new job.

Research the company and the position

If you’ve found a company you’re serious about working for or a position that seems like the right fit, don’t apply immediately. Do more research. Read through the website and press releases. What do Glassdoor and LinkedIn have to say? Check out their Hoover’s profile. Find similar positions in other companies and compare descriptions.

If you still want to apply after researching, then you can write about how your skills match the position and how you would fit in with the company’s culture. If the position calls for leadership skills, briefly mention a situation in which you led a team to success. Give evidence. Write about which of the company’s programs you admire. Use specifics to demonstrate your investment in the application.

Get into an employer-first mindset

The employer will be thinking, “What’s in it for us?” Catch the employer’s attention by answering that question for them. Can you increase profits, retain talent, produce creative work, or boost productivity? How does your skill set fit with what they need? Sell yourself by explaining how you’ll benefit the company.

Enlist the power of verbals to add energy

Research shows that you need to come across as energetic and enthusiastic about the job to retain a reader’s interest. Use verbals, verb forms that act as nouns, adverbs, or adjectives, to give your sentences energy. Compare these two paragraphs:

Passage A

There are four main steps in the composition of a cover letter. First, you must collect your thoughts about the position and the company. You should gather evidence of your experience and the skills that will be described in the letter. The next step involves the development of those thoughts by the use of examples from your previous work experience. Next, you should organize these thoughts into three paragraphs: the reason you’re writing goes in the first paragraph; what qualifications pertain to the position and what benefits these qualities provide to the company goes in the second paragraph; and a sales close goes in the final paragraph. The last step is the determination of whether or not you have made any grammar or spelling errors.

Passage B

Composing a cover letter involves four main steps. Collecting your thoughts about the position and the company is the first step. You should gather evidence of your experience and the skills that you plan to describe in the letter. Developing these thoughts by using examples from your previous work experience is the next step. The third step involves organizing these thoughts into three paragraphs. Use the first paragraph to explain why you’re writing; use the second to describe what qualifications pertain to the position and what benefits these qualities provide to the company in the second paragraph; and follow up with a sales close in the final paragraph. The last step is to determine if you have made any grammar or spelling errors.

The verbals in passage B are marked with bold text. In a study comparing readers’ preference for passages similar to those above, over 75 percent of respondents chose passage B and described it as “more to the point,” “more organized,” and “clearer,” which supports the hypothesis that readers prefer more syntactically complex verbals over passages not as syntactically complex.

Edit, proofread, then do it again

You may be a perfect fit for the position, but grammar and spelling mistakes will prevent you from being invited for an interview. Take the time to review your email introduction, cover letter, and résumé for mistakes. Review it slowly, read it aloud, and use Grammarly to make sure it’s 100 percent error-free before sending.

Craft a cover letter that an employer wants to read by making it specific and engaging. That way, you can apply for fewer jobs and receive more invitations to interview.

3 Punctuation Mistakes That Can Make You Look Like A Cannibal

1. Eat your dinner. vs Eat. You’re dinner.

Normal: Eat your dinner. Cannibalistic: Eat. You’re dinner.

That apostrophe (‘) is important! There are often a lot of hilarious (sometimes scary) sentences that come about when people confuse “your” and “you’re.” To avoid looking like a creep, it’s best to remember that your is the possessive form of you. It functions just like my does in relation to me. If you get confused by that, you can memorize you’re as the contraction (short form) of “you are.” Your = the possessive form of you You’re = the short form of you are.

2. Let’s eat, Grandma. vs. Let’s eat Grandma. Normal: Let’s eat, Grandma. Cannibalistic: Let’s eat Grandma.

The comma here is critical. The comma tells the reader that Granny isn’t the object of the verb “eat.” That is, with the comma, Granny isn’t on the main course tonight. The function of the comma here is to show that the sentence “let’s eat” is directed to an audience, Grandma.

3. I love cooking, my dogs, and my family. vs. I love cooking my dogs and my family. Normal: I love cooking, my dogs, and my family. Cannibalistic: I love cooking my dogs and my family.

Similar to number two, the commas here keep the nouns “dogs” and “family” from becoming unintentional objects of the verb “cooking.” In general, use commas to break up the items in lists.

Past Continuous Tense

The past continuous tense, also known as the past progressive tense, refers to a continuing action or state that was happening at some point in the past. The past continuous tense is formed by combining the past tense of to be (i.e., was/were) with the verb’s present participle (-ing word).

There are many situations in which this verb tense might be used in a sentence. For example, it is often used to describe conditions that existed in the past.

The sun was shining every day that summer.

As I spoke, the children were laughing at my cleverness.

It can also be used to describe something that was happening continuously in the past when another action interrupted it.

The audience was applauding until he fell off the stage.

I was making dinner when she arrived.

The past continuous can shed light on what was happening at a precise time in the past.

At 6 o’clock, I was eating dinner.

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It can also refer to a habitual action in the past.

She was talking constantly in class in those days.

One final caution: Though the irregularities are few, not every verb is suited to describing a continuous action. Certain verbs can’t be used in the past continuous tense. One common example is the verb to arrive.

At noon, he was arriving.

At noon, he arrived.