2 Pairs of Words People Confuse All Too Often

Antidote vs. Anecdote Antidote: A remedy to counteract the effects of poison; something that counteracts or prevents something harmful. For example: We must find the antidote to the poison before its effects spread throughout the body. Her sense of humor is the perfect antidote to this stressful situation.

Anecdote: A short account of a real incident or person, often humorous or interesting; an account which supports an argument, but which is not supported by scientific or statistical analysis. For example: After explaining the philosophical concept, our professor shared an anecdote that explained its practical purpose. There are many anecdotes that support the use of tablets in schools.

Adverse vs. Averse Adverse: Unfavorable; antagonistic in purpose or effect; contrary to one’s welfare; acting against; opposed; contrary. It was difficult to accomplish anything in such adverse circumstances. Although the weekly meetings improved communication between team members, they had an adverse effect on productivity.

Averse: Having a repugnance or opposition of mind; having a strong dislike. She was completely averse to the idea of taking a family road trip. I typically don’t eat meat, but I’m not always averse to eating fish.

“Make Yourself At Home” with Good Grammar

Believe it or not, the quality of your writing significantly influences some of the most important milestones in your life.

In school, good grammar helps students to achieve higher grades. On the job, professionals with fewer grammar errors tend to achieve higher positions; their writing is demonstrative of the credibility, professionalism, and accuracy observable in their work. And in your personal life, better spelling and grammar can even earn you a date!

In honor of National Grammar Day, the Grammarly team partnered with Redfin, the technology-powered real estate brokerage, to see if good grammar has an impact on other important life milestones – like buying a home. We surveyed nearly 1,300 people on our combined social media platforms, and here’s what we learned:

When researching a home for purchase, buyers prefer a “medium-sized” listing description. Somewhere around 50 words is the sweet spot. Beyond public opinion, Redfin looked deeper into listings across its platform and found that homes with descriptions of around 50 words are, indeed, more likely to sell within 90 days. What’s more, they also tend to sell for higher than list price.

The majority of survey respondents report that misspellings or improper grammar in a home listing matter “a lot.” As a matter of fact, 43.4 percent of survey respondents would be much less inclined to tour a home that features spelling or grammar errors prominently in the listing.

Redfin pointed out some examples of the spelling errors that have been known to haunt home listings in its blog post today, including:

• Low grime area
• This is a real germ!
• Fresh pain and carpet
• Curve appeal

Correctly spelled words used in the wrong context cause embarrassing mistakes. Luckily, Grammarly spots erroneous use of grime/crime, gem/germ, and many more commonly confused words (eg. lose/loose, affect/effect, lie/lay, there/their/they’re).

National Grammar Day is a great time each year to reflect on the ways that grammar truly touches your life and impacts your confidence, credibility, and success. At school, at home, or on the job, make sure that your grammar is something to write home about.

Happy National Grammar Day, friends!

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.

Continuously vs. Continually—What’s the Difference?

The adverbs continuously and continually (and their corresponding adjectives, continuous and continual) are words that are confused easily and often. Continuously describes an action that happens without ceasing. Continually, on the other hand, describes an action that recurs frequently or regularly.

The confusion about whether to use continually or continuously is understandable, because both words share the same Latin root, continuare, meaning “to join together or connect.” Only the endings of the words are different, and over time, the two words have evolved with subtly distinct meanings.

Define Continuously: Things That Recur Nonstop

The most common mistake people make when using these words is to ascribe an action with unintended frequency by using continuously where continually is more appropriate. This results in an exaggeration that will not escape the notice of an editor.

My grandmother corrects my grammar continuously.

Does she? We all have relatives who can be exasperating at times, but is it possible for your grandmother to correct you continuously? Unless your grandmother is capable of delivering rapid-fire corrections at you with incessant, Terminator-like determination, continual is the word you need here.

My grandmother corrects my grammar continually.

Let’s try another example.

It is hard to get a word in edgewise with her because she talks continuously.

Talking is an action that is accomplished by human beings, and perhaps parrots. For both, it is almost impossible to do it continuously. I had an aunt who came close; she drew in big gasps between anecdotes so she could continue talking without getting light-headed. But unless a speaker’s “gift of the gab” can match my Aunt Kay’s, chances are they will occasionally pause for breath and await your responses.

It is hard to get a word in edgewise with her because she talks continually.

If your aim is to underscore the fact that a speaker talked for a period of time in the broader sense before a large-scale interruption occurred, that can merit the word continuously.

Professor Smith lectured continuously for twenty minutes, then had a question-and-answer period.

Define Continually:Things That Recur Frequently

It is quite easy to decide whether to use continuously or continually if you remember to ask yourself, “Did the action ever stop?” Some things do happen continuously and others simply don’t. A clock can tick continuously, and a heart can beat continuously. These actions are automatic. But can lightning strike continuously, for example?

I was too frightened to sleep because lightning struck continuously during the night.

Not only would that be frightening, it would be apocalyptic. You would awaken to a charred landscape that would be quite sobering to behold. Luckily, Mother Nature doesn’t assault us with continuous lightning. On a stormy night, however, it could be continual; that is, it could be happening often and regularly.

I was too frightened to sleep because lightning struck continually during the night.

Continuous or Continual in Historical Contexts

Continuously may work best when you are writing about a phenomenon that persists over a long period of time in an anthropological, historical, or geological sense. Take this sentence, for example:

Because it has been used continually for almost two thousand years, Rome’s Pantheon is well preserved.

The concept here is that buildings that never lapse into disuse are repaired and generally given the attention due to them. While it is not incorrect to say that the Pantheon was used continually (i.e., frequently, in the sense of “it’s amazing how Rome never sleeps”) over the last two thousand or so years, the fact that its use was never interrupted by a period of disuse needs to be highlighted.

Because it has been used continuously for almost two thousand years, Rome’s Pantheon is well preserved.

Now that you have untangled continuously and continually, you might want to read about other commonly confused English words.

7 Easy Phone Interview Tips That Will Help You Get The Job

The job hunting process can be long and stressful. You’ve crafted the perfect resume, sent out countless cover letters, and now you’ve finally heard back that you’ve got a phone interview. This should be a walk in the park, right? An obligatory step to confirm you’re a real human.

Until you find yourself on the phone with the interviewer and they’re not just chatting you up. They’re asking you real questions, some of them tough questions, and your throat is going dry and you’re talking a million miles a minute and then it’s all over and you’re wondering what just happened. Did you blow your chances at another interview?

The phone interview is easy to underestimate. It doesn’t seem as intimidating as meeting in person, but if you don’t nail the phone interview you definitely won’t be asked to come for an on-site.

To set you up for success, we’ve put together seven easy tips that will help you prepare for your phone interview and give you the best shot at advancing to the next round.

1Do Your Homework

Learn everything you can about the company. Scour their website, social media, LinkedIn, and current news for info. You need to know the facts of who they are and what they’re doing, plus their mission and values. (Know your audience!)

Learn everything you can about the job. Review the job description with a fine-tooth comb and check for reviews on Glassdoor. By knowing the skills and qualities they want in a candidate, you’ll be able to craft answers for their interview questions that show you are exactly who they’re looking for.

2Curate Your Success Stories

Now that you know what skills and qualities they’ll be asking about, start thinking through your work history and brainstorming which experiences will best illustrate what they want.

So when you’re asked, “Do you work well under pressure?” you won’t just say “yes”—you’ll also recount the story of your company’s product launch from hell and describe how you managed to stay calm, come up with a successful plan B for your team, and crank out quality copy at the last minute.

Outline each success story, then practice telling them to a friend (ideally in thirty seconds or less per story).

3Prep Answers for These Common General Questions

Make sure each success story you provide not only answers the question, but demonstrates the skills and qualities the company is looking for.

“What is your biggest strength?”

“What is your greatest weakness?”

Here’s a tip: Don’t try to pretend you’re perfect! Talk about how you’ve dealt with your weakness. Tell a success story of how you’ve overcome it!

“How are you with time management?”

Here’s a tip: Don’t just say you’re organized. Recount a work situation where time management was important and you were able to nail it.

“Why are you leaving your current position?”

“Why do you want to join our company?”

“Why should we hire you?”

4Prep Answers for These Common Behavioral Questions

“Tell me about a time you took initiative or stepped into a leadership role.”

“…a time you had to deal with conflict at work.”

“…a situation where you used problem solving.”

“…a time you collaborated on a team project.”

“…a time you went beyond your job description.”

“Tell me about your proudest professional accomplishment.”

5Get In the Zone

• Avoid brain fog by getting a good night’s sleep.
• Ditch the jammies and dress in business casual (it’s all about mindset!).
• Call a friend so you can warm up your vocal chords and get in phone mode.
• Remove any distractions (TVs off, pets absent, kids occupied).
• Be ready five to ten minutes in advance so you won’t feel rushed.
• Have a glass of water handy.
• Have a copy of your resume.
• Have a cheat sheet of the qualities they’re looking for and your success stories.
• Have a pen and paper available to take notes.
• Remember to breathe, listen, and smile.

6Ask Questions

At some point, the interviewer will ask if you have any questions. Having zero could be taken as a red flag, so plan out four to five relevant questions, such as:

“What will be the training process for this position?”

“Can you tell me more about the team I would be working with?”

“What opportunities would I have for advancement within the company?”

“What are the next steps in the interview process?”

These questions communicate that you’re serious about the position and you want to confirm whether the company’s a good fit for you.

7Send a Thank You Note

Practice courtesy and professionalism. Within twenty-four hours, follow up with the interviewer by sending a thank you note via email.

Thank them for the opportunity to interview, express your continued interest, and reiterate how you would be a great fit for the position.

Future Perfect Continuous Tense

The future perfect continuous, also sometimes called the future perfect progressive, is a verb tense that describes actions that will continue up until a point in the future. The future perfect continuous consists of will + have + been + the verb’s present participle (verb root + -ing).

When we describe an action in the future perfect continuous tense, we are projecting ourselves forward in time and looking back at the duration of that activity. The activity will have begun sometime in the past, present, or in the future, and is expected to continue in the future.

In November, I will have been working at my company for three years.

At five o’clock, I will have been waiting for thirty minutes.

When I turn thirty, I will have been playing piano for twenty-one years.

Nonaction Verbs Do Not Use the Future Perfect Continuous

Remember that nonaction verbs like to be, to seem, or to know are not suited to the future perfect continuous tense. Instead, these verbs take the future perfect tense, which is formed with will + have + past participle.

On Thursday, I will have been knowing you for a week.

On Thursday, I will have known you for a week.

I will have been reading forty-five books by Christmas.

I will have read forty-five books by Christmas.

How to Take a Break Without Breaking Focus

We all procrastinate from time to time and struggle to get things done. For years, much of the dialogue around procrastination has been about how to fight it and, theoretically, win. However, that approach has left a whole lot of us—included me—feeling pretty pathetic when we just can’t kick the habit. Turns out, we’ve been duped. For the last several years, experts have made headway in transforming procrastination from an evil that must be vanquished to a tool worth embracing in all its paradoxical and oxymoronic glory.

Let me introduce you to productive procrastination.

I almost giggle when I say it because it feels like I’m getting away with something very bad. However, when you learn a bit and start to incorporate productive procrastination into your life, it’s far from naughty—it’s so nice. Procrastination done right can help you clarify your goals, remove unnecessary tasks, and be more creative. But you can go beyond that. Here are a few indulgent ways you can get more (productive) procrastination into your life.

1 Become an active procrastinator.

The secret of my incredible energy and efficiency in getting work done is a simple one. The psychological principle is this: anyone can do any amount of work, provided it isn’t the work he is supposed to be doing at that moment.

—Robert Benchley

The main idea here is that you learn to pit your tasks against each other so that in procrastinating on one, you actually accomplish a lot of others. This can mean structuring to do lists so that your bigger, more vague tasks are at the top, but the actual work you need to do that day is somewhere lower down. Or just allow yourself to do something else as long as that something else isn’t binge-watching Netflix/scrolling through Facebook/pick your poison.

2 Try the “Nothing Alternative.”

Roy F. Baumeister, a social psychologist, coined the term “Nothing Alternative” to describe a strategy where you are given the choice between boredom and actually working on what you need to work on. The New York Times demonstrates the effectiveness of the method with the example of writer Raymond Chandler, who forced himself to write for hours a day by following two rules:

1. You don’t have to write.
2. You can’t do anything else.

Judging by Chandler’s output, it seems you’ll get a lot done just to avoid boredom.

3 Get organized.

Lifehack put together a pretty good list of things to procrastinate with, but one item on their list deserves special attention—organization. In all its forms, organization can be simple and makes life easier. There’s also a short feedback loop so you feel good about what you’ve accomplished. (Flow, anyone?) The best part is that organization can be for the task you actually need to do, and it doesn’t need to be particularly coherent (yet). For example, organizing your desk before writing or creating a blog to-do list—rather than writing the blog—can move you in the right direction but scratch your procrastination itch.

So, let go of some of the guilt and embrace active, productive procrastination as a way to get more done.

Are you a procrastinator? What are some ways that you “productively procrastinate”?