3 Books to Read with Your BFF

Reading is often a solitary experience. But good books can bring people together in surprising and meaningful ways. Here are three books we think would be great to read with a close friend, or someone with whom you might want to become close friends:

The Anne of Green Gables series by Lucy Maud Montgomery

The friendship between Diana Barry and Anne Shirley in the Anne of Green Gables series is famous for providing us with the term “bosom friend.” Anne and Diana are friends through thick and thin, stirring up mischief and helping each other through life’s struggles in equal measure. Read this book with: your “bosom friend” and reflect on what makes your relationship so special.

The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien

Nothing solidifies friendships quite like an epic adventure. Follow this group of friends and allies as they battle trolls, giant birds, and other surprising foes in their search for hidden treasure. Read this book with: a friend who is always up for adventure.

The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky

When you’re a teenager, parents just don’t seem understand what’s important. But your friends do. Follow along as Charlie learns what it means to be a true friend. Read this book with: your BFF from high school.

Which books do you think friends (or book groups) should read together? Share your suggestions in the comments!

Do you use tools to write better emails?

What do you think about the state of writing in the workplace? Share your thoughts in our weekly poll!

8 Phrases That Can Make Your Business Writing Seem Outdated

The workplace is constantly evolving, with new generations coming in as the older ones retire. For the many professionals caught in between these two age groups, it’s important to adapt to new work styles. The millennial generation has complicated this even further. There have been reports that some millennials aren’t as quick to adapt to new work environments, but rather sometimes expect businesses to change to meet their needs. Some say that inspiring younger generations is the key to getting them motivated.

Millennials also bring a new energy to the business world. As professionals adjust, they’re quickly learning that it’s important to avoid standing out by using outdated verbiage in their emails and other written communications. Whether you’re trying to win over a client or communicating with a team member, here are a few terms to avoid if you want to seem current.

As Per Your Request

“As per your request” sounds formal and grammatically incorrect, even though it was used in business for many years. Its time has come and gone. Instead, switch it with “As you requested,” which says the same thing in a much more approachable and simple way.

Yours Truly

At one time, you wouldn’t think about ending a business letter without a valediction such as “yours truly,” “sincerely,” or “regards.” To this day, some traditionalists still end business communication this way, even when that communication takes place through email. Those people may not have noticed that most people don’t use a valediction at all. Among those who do, sign-offs such as “best regards” are preferable to the very outdated “yours truly.” Although “cheers” has become popular in recent years, some professionals feel that it may be too pretentious unless you’re British.

Enclosed

If you’re sending a packet to someone by postal mail and you’ve enclosed something, the words “enclosed please find” are appropriate. If you’re forwarding something as an attachment in an email, the word you’re looking for is “attached.” Instead of formally saying “attached please find,” go for the warmer and friendlier “I’ve attached.”

Call Me

This may be picky, but millennials generally aren’t as attached to voice calls as their older coworkers. Text messages passed phone calls as the preferred method of communication around 2007, which means that your younger team members are more likely to chat with you over Slack or some other platform than to use their smartphone to make an actual call. Instead, simply say “contact me” and let the other person decide which mode of communication they prefer.

Broken Record

Vinyl may be back in style, but many of the millennials in today’s workplace grew up on CDs and DVDs. If you tell them that something “sounds like a broken record,” they may be more likely to conjure up images of champion athletic record breakers than the type of record that skipped. To communicate that someone is repeating themselves ad nauseam, just say so and skip the cliché.

My Bad

This term was popularized in the 90s. It may seem to you as though the 90s were just a few years ago, but for twenty-somethings, the experience of hearing “my bad” is the equivalent of how you felt when you heard your parents say “groovy.”

As for me, I remember when “my bad” didn’t exist yet, and I really didn’t like how popular it became. Do yourself a favor. Simply say, “I’m sorry.” Not only will you avoid using an outdated phrase, it will also come across as more sincere, and perhaps even more intelligent.

Interwebs

There are several terms for the Internet that have dropped out of favor as tech has grown more sophisticated. Referring to the web as the interwebs or the worldwide web will date you. When giving an web address, you should also leave off the “www,” since that has dwindled away as well. If you recite “http” as part of a URL, you’ll go beyond appearing dated and instead sound like you have no idea what you’re talking about.

Nine-to-Five Job

For many years, the workweek has extended well beyond nine-to-five, with many workers showing up each day at eight a.m. For millennials, this phrase also creates anxiety, since many workers now prefer flexible work hours. Instead, refer to full-time workers as “salaried employees” if you need a label for them.

Written communication is essential for interacting with colleagues, especially now that so many workers tend to avoid speaking on the phone. By rethinking some of the words you use and replacing them with more productive alternatives, you’ll be better able to connect with your younger coworkers and clients.

A journalist and digital consultant, John Boitnott has worked at TV, print, radio, and Internet companies for 20 years. He’s an advisor at StartupGrind and has written for BusinessInsider, Fortune, NBC, Fast Company, Inc., Entrepreneur, and Venturebeat. You can find him on Twitter here.

Is ‘Ginormous’ a Word?

• Ginormous is a non-standard word.
• Ginormous is an adjective that means very big.

---

In the murky territory of words you’ve heard people use but you’re not really sure whether you could call them words, ginormous takes up a lot of space.

What Does Ginormous Mean?

Ginormous originated during the World War II as a slang word among British soldiers. Its first official appearance in written form was in the 1948 A Dictionary of Forces’ Slang, 1939-1945.

Ginormous describes something that’s really big. It’s most likely a combination of two other words used to describe size: gigantic and enormous:

We saw a ginormous snail in the garden today.

Compared to Earth, the sun is ginormous.

While some might say that combining two words with such similar meanings isn’t a good way of creating a new word, the fact is that you can find ginormous in dictionaries, it has an established meaning, and people use it—it meets all the criteria of a real word. And even though it is an informal one, we can still use it when we want to say that something is ridiculously big or much bigger than expected; it just might be wise not to do it in academic or other formal types of writing.

Examples

Heck, you might as well learn to scuba dive, because you’ll be practicing most of your extraterrestrial excursions in NASA’s ginormous underwater practice tank at the Johnson Space Center as you train for your mission.

Flying Magazine

But no matter how great your Friday is, chances are it’s not nearly as euphoric as the day these people had diving into a ginormous pillow.

The Huffington Post

Entered Elvis, the ginormous reptile, as Billy went down on his knee to pop the question.

India Times

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

via GIPHY

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

via GIPHY

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

via GIPHY

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?

---

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.