How to Get Organized During Your Job Search: 6 Helpful Tips

Job hunting is no one’s favorite activity. Customizing your resume and cover letter for each position (not to mention typing the same information found in the resume you just attached into various application systems) can be grueling work. Job hunting is a full-time job, and you’re not getting paid a dime for it.

Getting organized can save you time and make the process less frustrating. Here are six ways to streamline your job search to make it not only easier on you, but potentially more successful.

1Make a list of keywords.

Quick! Can you name all of your job skills in under thirty seconds? If someone asked you what types of positions you’re qualified for, would you be able to rattle them off easily? If so, great—you know how to market yourself well. But if you’re like most job seekers, odds are good that you could benefit from some self-evaluation.

Before you begin your job search in earnest, sit down and make a list of your skills. When I was job hunting, my list included things like writing, editing, communication, and copywriting. Next, focus on the types of positions that might be right for you. Make a list of all the job titles you can think of that would be within the scope of your search.

Here’s a tip: Keep your list handy. (See below for how I used a spreadsheet.) You’ll need it as you’re browsing job sites. Add to it as you find new job titles and keywords that pop up during your search.That way, you’ll be broadening the scope of your search as you go.

2Find opportunities with job search alerts.

Now that you have an idea of what you’re looking for, you can start digging into job boards. Many will send you email alerts with new positions that match your skills. Here are a few to help you get rolling.

• Indeed
• SimplyHired
• LinkedIn Jobs
• Glassdoor
• Monster

Here’s a tip: While you shouldn’t put your eggs into one basket by focusing solely on one job search site, it makes sense to consolidate your efforts by narrowing your search to a few top sites that are likely to net you the best results.

3Spreadsheets are your friends.

When I was job hunting a few years ago, I found it impossible to keep track of the status of my applications. I wasn’t very spreadsheet savvy, so it never occurred to me to use a free spreadsheet tool like Google Sheets to track my job search efforts.

The good news is you don’t have to be a spreadsheet wizard to use Excel or Sheets. All it takes to create an efficient tracking system is the ability to name a few columns with appropriate headers and then fill in the blanks. (Trust me, it’s easy.) Here are the columns I would use in my search if I had it to do it over again:

• Company – The name of the company you’ve applied to.
• Position – The title of the position you’re interested in.
• Job Listing Link – It can be helpful to have a link to the original job listing so you can refer to it later.
• Application Date
• Contact – If you have a contact name, put it here.
• Email – Add your contact’s email address if you have it.
• Interview Date
• Follow-up – If you scored an interview, this is a good place to note how you followed up.
• Status – Do you have a second interview scheduled? Are you waiting for a response? Track your current status here.
• Comments – This is a good place to add any thoughts or insights you’ve gained as you were researching the company and position. Don’t rely on your memory when you have a lot of job search irons in the fire.

A spreadsheet would’ve saved me a ton of time in my job hunt by preventing me from having to search through various emails and links to remind myself of where I’d applied and what my status was.

Here’s a tip: Your spreadsheet can be a catch-all for things related to your job hunt. Create a new tab to store a list of job search site links (like the ones listed above) so you don’t have to hunt them down anew each day. Create another tab to store a list of job skills keywords and the titles of positions you’re qualified for. You never know when you’ll need to refer to them as you’re searching through open positions.

4Use a calendar.

If you’re anything like me (the ADHD is strong with this one), you’ve woken up in a cold sweat, your heart racing, thinking Is my job interview this morning? Did I oversleep? Do I have only ten minutes to get ready and race out the door? Oh em gee!

I never missed an interview. I was never late for one, either. But the fear that I might mess up was strong and evoked a near steady state of low-level anxiety. A calendar would have helped alleviate that.

These days, I use Google Calendar, but any calendar app can make the process of tracking upcoming interviews and things like networking events or job fairs much easier. Having a calendar takes the stress out of having to remember upcoming appointments and eliminates those heart-pounding morning wakeups.

5Make a schedule.

As I mentioned earlier, a job search can be like a full-time job in itself, except that it has no pay and no benefits. #SadFace

You can streamline your day by setting a schedule. This was something I did right when I was in the market for a new gig. I stepped into my office at 9 a.m. every weekday. First, I checked my email for any replies from hiring managers. Then, I looked at my new job alerts and checked job boards for any new listings. Next, I focused on putting in applications, which was a more time-consuming process because I was careful to customize each cover letter and tweak each resume.

Think of your job search as a job you’re reporting to each day. Not only will it help you stay committed and on track, it will bring some purpose to your downtime.

6Use templates.

Templates are a time-saver. Make customizable templates for your cover letters (and please do customize each one) and other inquiries and replies. You’ll thank yourself when you’re not writing every single email from scratch. Save templates in Google Docs or another word processing program so you can quickly access them.

Here’s a tip: Although they may not show up in your email client, other clients may see font changes and other oddities that are remnants of copying and pasting. To strip formatting from the text you paste, use Ctrl/Cmd + Shift + V to paste.

Taking a little time to get organized and plan your job search in advance will save you time and prevent irritation and stress. Go get ’em!

How to Write Powerful Bullet Points

Any writer who’s spent time in the trenches publishing articles online knows it’s hard to keep a reader’s attention. In fact, according to Tony Haile’s 2014 article on Time.com, 55 percent of readers will spend fifteen seconds or less actively on a page reading the article that took you many times longer to write and carefully proofread. Like it or not, our online culture, which blasts us with a never-ending stream of content 24/7, has made us skimmers rather than deep readers.

What’s a content creator to do? You could keep your content short, but there’s evidence that longer pieces get more social engagement and links. The key to writing articles that hold a reader’s attention is not to make them shorter but to make them more readable, and doing so requires expert organization that calls attention to key topics. There’s arguably no more useful organizational tool than the venerable bullet point.

How to write powerful bullet points

According to Copyblogger, “the essence of a great bullet is brevity + promise.” By using bullets, you’re demonstrating that you know how to be concise and cut to the chase. Then, you must deliver on that promise by making every point essential and impactful. Let’s demonstrate the power of bullet points with a list of tips for writing awesome ones:

• Think of a bullet point as a mini headline. It needs to be concise and attention-grabbing in a way that intrigues readers and compels them to read more.
• Highlight elements key to understanding the content of your article. There’s no room for fluff here, so call out what’s most important.
• Keep it simple. Avoid complex outlines and don’t use sub-bullets if you can help it.
• Keep bullets thematically related. Bullet points highlight key elements of very specific topics, so stay on a single track.
• Make your bullet points symmetrical . . . just like the ones here. Notice how each point begins with a bolded directive and ends with a one-sentence explanation.
• Work in keywords. Search engines tend to give bulleted lists a little more weight.
• Don’t overdo it. You want your post to look like an article, not a grocery list.

What is a fascination?

A fascination is a copywriting technique for creating points that make your readers so intrigued (fascinated!) that they’re compelled to get more info. It’s a go-to marketing tactic you’ve no doubt seen in advertising. Let’s invent a make-believe product to show you how fascinations work.

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The Amazing Party Animal Personality Enhancer!

Use this simple device during any social event and you’re virtually guaranteed to

• develop killer dance moves
• become the most entertaining person in the room
• attract 180 percent more attention from potential love interests
• increase your notoriety in your social circles by 83 percent

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Okay, so this “personality enhancer” sounds too good to be true (or suspiciously like your favorite party beverage), but the points are compelling. Who doesn’t want to become an entertaining, attractive, well-known dancing machine?

The same technique can work well when you’re trying to get readers to spend more than fifteen seconds looking at your post. If it fits the tone of your article, frontload it with bulleted items that make compelling promises. You’re telling visitors that, if they take the time to read this article, they’ll get to know more about the fascinating topics you highlighted.

Grammar basics of using bullet points

Bullet points often create confusion for writers. Do you capitalize each one? Put periods at the end? When should you use numbers instead of bullets? It turns out that making your articles easy to read through the strategic use of bullet points requires a little know-how. Here are a few guidelines.

The introductory sentence

If the text introducing your list is a complete sentence, it should end with a colon. If it’s a fragment, forget the colon and jump straight into the list.

Numbers or bullets?

If your action items need to take place in a specific order, use a numbered list rather than bullets.

EXAMPLE:

Here’s how to give your dog a bath:

1 Place a shower cap on your dog’s head.

2 Give him his rubber ducky to provide emotional security.

3 Gently bathe your dog. Avoid getting water in his big sad eyes.

You could also use a numbered list if your introductory text promises a certain number of items, like the three best reasons to bathe your dog. (But do you really need reasons?)

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Punctuation with bullet points

If the text of your bullet point is a complete sentence (or multiple sentences), use capital letters and punctuation. If your points are not structured as proper sentences, you don’t need to end with punctuation. Capitalization is a style choice—with sentence fragments, you can choose to start each with either upper- or lower-case letters.

The structure to use with bullet points

Don’t mix and match sentence structures. Your points should be consistent, either all sentences or all fragments.

Make sure the grammatical structure of your bullet points is parallel by starting each with the same part of speech. For instance, if you start one point with an adjective, start them all with an adjective.

CORRECT:

Adopting a dog will make you

• popular with dog lovers
• famous for having the most adorable pet on your block

INCORRECT:

Adopting a dog will make you

• popular with dog lovers
• you’ll be famous for having the most adorable pet on your block

Here’s a tip: Read each bullet point with the text that precedes it to make sure each one is parallel and makes sense as a sentence.

Using the correct example above, you would read:

“Adopting a dog will make you popular with dog lovers.”

But the incorrect example makes no sense as a sentence, so you know you need to edit:

“Adopting a dog will make you you’ll be famous for having the most adorable pet on your block.”

Keep your style consistent

Some of the bullet point style rules aren’t hard and fast. Unless you’re following a specific style guide (such as the AP Stylebook or The Chicago Manual of Style), use the style that looks best to you, but remember to keep it parallel and keep it consistent, because those things are non-negotiable. With a little precision, you’ll create bullet points that will catch your readers’ attention and keep them on the page so your carefully crafted words earn more than just fifteen seconds of their time.

What Is a Prepositional Phrase?

A prepositional phrase is a group of words consisting of a preposition, its object, and any words that modify the object. Most of the time, a prepositional phrase modifies a verb or a noun. These two kinds of prepositional phrases are called adverbial phrases and adjectival phrases, respectively.

At a minimum, a prepositional phrase consists of one preposition and the object it governs. The object can be a noun, a gerund (a verb form ending in “-ing” that acts as a noun), or a clause.

He arrived in time.

Is she really going out with that guy?

To these two basic elements, modifiers can be freely added.

He arrived in the nick of time.

Is she really going out with that tall, gorgeous guy?

Some of the most common prepositions that begin prepositional phrases are to, of, about, at, before, after, by, behind, during, for, from, in, over, under, and with.

Prepositional Phrases That Modify Nouns

When a prepositional phrase acts upon a noun, we say it is behaving adjectivally because adjectives modify nouns. A prepositional phrase that behaves adjectivally is called, quite logically, an adjectival phrase.

The cat in the middle is the cutest.

I always buy my milk from the convenience store on Main Street.

My mother has always wanted to live in a cabin by the lake.

In the first of these sentences, in the middle answers the question of which cat the writer thinks is the cutest. Similarly, on Main Street gives us information about which store the writer is describing, and by the lake tells us what kind of cabin the writer’s mother is dreaming about. All of these adjectival phrases provide specificity to a noun in order to enhance our understanding.

Prepositional Phrases That Modify Verbs

When a prepositional phrase acts upon a verb, we say it is behaving adverbially because adverbs modify verbs. A prepositional phrase that behaves adverbially is called an adverbial phrase.

To find the person who stole the last cookie, look behind you.

Harry drank his Butterbeer with fervor.

In the first sentence, behind you answers the question “Look where?” In the second, with fervor answers the question “Drank how?”

Prepositional Phrases Acting as Nouns

Less frequently, prepositional phrases can function like nouns in a sentence.

During the national anthem is the worst time to blow your nose.

After the game will be too late for us to go to dinner.

How to Avoid Excessive Prepositional Phrases

It is tempting to overuse prepositions and prepositional phrases. If you see more than one preposition for every ten or fifteen words in your writing, you should edit some of them out. You may be surprised at how much more elegant and economical your writing is when you make the effort to do this.

It is best to behave with caution when running with a sword in the presence of Magneto.

There is nothing grammatically incorrect about this sentence, but it has two “with” phrases, an “of” phrase, and an “in” phrase, which is a sure sign that it could be written more efficiently.

In Magneto’s presence, run cautiously with swords.

Here, it was possible to replace one of the prepositional phrases, with caution with the correlating adverb cautiously. Of Magneto was simply a possessive that can be easily converted into Magneto’s. Four prepositional phrases have been reduced to two.

Another way to reduce prepositional phrases is to switch from a passive voice to an active voice. There is a famous example to illustrate this concept.

Why was the road crossed by the chicken?

Clearly, the passive voice makes this sentence fussy and the prepositional phrase by the chicken seems a bit silly. It would be better written in an active voice, with the chicken in the driver’s seat where it belongs.

Why did the chicken cross the road?

Hanged vs. Hung—Learn the Difference

Even the most hardened grammarians don’t condone capital punishment for grammar offenses, but we do tend to get hung up about hanged. Hanged can only refer to someone’s death by hanging. If you are wondering, “Is it hanged or hung?” establish whether a deadly action has taken place.

It’s one of the few times when grammar becomes a matter of life and death.

The Past Tense of Hang

Hung is the past tense of to hang when it means “to suspend or be suspended.”

Hanged is the past tense of to hang when it means “to kill someone by tying a rope attached from above and removing the support from beneath.”

to hang = to suspend

Present Tense	I hang	you hang	he/she/it hangs	we hang	you hang	they hang
Simple Past Tense	I hung	you hung	he/she/it hung	we hung	you hung	they hung
Present Participle	I am hanging	you are hanging	he/she/it is hanging	we are hanging	you are hanging	they are hanging
Past Participle	I/you/we/(s)he/it/they hung	—	—	—	—	—

to hang = to kill by hanging

Present Tense	I hang	you hang	he/she/it hangs	we hang	you hang	they hang
Simple Past Tense	I hanged	you hanged	he/she/it hanged	we hanged	you hanged	they hanged
Present Participle	I am hanging	you are hanging	he/she/it is hanging	we are hanging	you are hanging	they are hanging
Past Participle	I/you/we/(s)he/it/they hanged	—	—	—	—	—

How to Use “Hung”

Clothes can be hung on hangers and pictures can be hung on walls. Some people use the rule of thumb that things are hung and people are hanged, but that doesn’t always work out the way it should. It is possible to suspend people without intending to hurt them—for example, to harness someone to a bungee cord and dangle them off the bridge (which may seem like tempting death, but that’s more of an opinion than a fact).

We hung all of our clothes on hangers when we unpacked our moving boxes.

I ran straight home from school with my Grammar MVP Award and hung it on the wall.

After the jump, Juan laughed as he hung from the bridge, ready to be hauled back up.

How to Use “Hanged”

If you are deciding between hanged vs. hung and an act of execution is involved, always choose hanged. Hanged can also be used reflexively to refer to suicides (e.g., he hanged himself, they hanged themselves).

H. H. Holmes was hung for murder in 1896.

H. H. Holmes was hanged for murder in 1896.

The terminally ill man hung himself rather than face a torturous demise.

The terminally ill man hanged himself rather than face a torturous demise.

So when you are playing the letter game Hangman, the figure you draw is your hanged man, not your hung man.

Difficult Differences Between “Hang” and “Hung”

Because it was common practice in centuries past not only to execute criminals by hanging but to also display their bodies for a period of time to deter other potential criminals, it is just possible that you will need to elucidate in your writing that a deceased person spent some time suspended post-execution.

Conveniently, history is rife with examples.

Captain Kidd was hanged at Execution Dock, London, in 1701. He was gibbeted and hung over the River Thames for a further three years as a warning to pirates.

Certain phrasal verbs containing hang confuse some writers as well. To hang out, which means “to casually socialize with friends,” should become hung out in the past tense. Hanged out implies something much less casual (and more deadly).

We hanged out at my mother’s house last Friday night.

We hung out at my mother’s house last Friday night.

Similarly, to be overly concerned about something is to get hung up on it, not hanged up.

Sure, I didn’t wash my hands before cooking dinner, but don’t get hanged up on it.

Sure, I didn’t wash my hands before cooking dinner, but don’t get hung up on it.

“Hanged” vs. “Hung”: Summary

Using the correct past tense of to hang is simple once you make the distinction between its use for capital punishment and its more innocuous meanings. All you need to remember is that hanged has to do with a person’s demise, and hung is used for all other definitions of “to hang,” including idiomatic verbal phrases that contain it.

Creative People Will Want to Know These 4 Tips from JJ Abrams

If you’re a fan of film, television, or lens flare, you’ve probably heard of JJ Abrams. He’s the Emmy award–winning writer-director-producer who brought us Alias, Felicity, Lost, Super 8, Mission Impossible III, Cloverfield, and 10 Cloverfield Lane.

Oh yeah . . . and he rebooted two of the greatest sci-fi franchises of all time, Star Trek and Star Wars. No big deal, y’all!

If you’re ready to make your own creative mark on the world, listen up—JJ’s got some advice for you. Here are four tips on creativity from the “Spielberg” of this generation.

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1Emotional Connection Is Everything

I love larger than life, kind of spectacle moments. But what’s important to me is that the characters are at the center, that emotionally you know where you are, and you’re tracking characters that are taking you through those spectacular moments. And that to me is the most important thing, that balance of the intimacy with the spectacle and the sort of hyper reality.

JJ knows the bottom line: your audience has to care. If they’re not emotionally invested in what’s going on, it doesn’t matter how shiny or bombastic you make something. That climactic moment you worked so hard to create will feel hollow if it’s lacking an emotional core for your audience to connect with.

2Be Open to the Best Idea

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If you’re not open to the best idea, whether it’s a scene for a movie, an episode or a story arc for a series, you’re closed to the possibilities . . . to look at it like a job or a project that is delineated by the expectations, to me limits the possibilities. Some of the great inventions were not intended.

JJ likens the creative process to “driving in the fog.” You have “the big idea” of where a project is going, but you’re also giving your work the space to organically evolve.

The Lost character Ben Linus was originally written for a single episode. When actor Michael Emerson showed up (and was brilliant), the Lost creators realized the character could be far more important to the story, and Ben Linus became a central character.

Are you willing to scrap your original idea for the best idea?

3Your Voice Matters

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. . . what I kind of learned early on is that your voice is as important as anyone else’s. You may not always be right and you shouldn’t be cocky about it but I felt that I needed to learn that the ideas that I had were as good as anyone else’s ideas. . . . That thing that you feel, if you really feel it, other people do too.

We all struggle with imposter syndrome and second-guessing ourselves. But if you’ve got an idea that excites you, don’t write it off. It may not always pan out, but if you don’t give yourself a chance, who will?

4The Only Thing Stopping You Is You

You want to write? Make movies? JJ’s advice is to go do it!

I used to say . . . to someone who wants to write, “Go! Write! Do your thing.” It’s free, you don’t need permission. But now I can say, “Go make your movie!” There’s nothing stopping you from going out there and getting the technology. You can lease, rent, buy stuff off the shelf that is . . . just as good, as the stuff that’s being used by the . . . “legit people.”

. . . the technology has been democratized, everyone has access to the ability to be a filmmaker, and if you want to do it, the only thing stopping you is you.

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The Early Bird Catches the Word: Analysis Shows We Write Better by Day

“Early to bed and early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise.”

So says the old proverb, often attributed to Benjamin Franklin. Of course, Franklin lived in a time before electric lighting, when staying up late meant burning the midnight oil and people had good reason to be productive during the daylight hours. Even so, at least when it comes to writing well, he may have been onto something.

Centuries later, with our homes illuminated by not only electric lights but also the glow of TVs, computers, and handheld devices, many of us have come to identify as either early birds or night owls. Early birds turn in at a reasonable hour so they can wake refreshed first thing in the morning. Night owls stay active long past dark and tend to sleep later.

The Grammarly team wanted to know whether time of day had a measurable effect on the quality of a person’s writing, so we crunched over one billion words proofread by our app in search of answers. Ben Franklin might have been pleased with our discoveries. We learned that, although we can’t know the status of their health, wealth, or wisdom, Grammarly users do their best online writing early in the day. Have a look at our infographic to see how early birds and night owls fared when blogging, writing emails, and using social media.

To share this infographic on your website or blog, copy-paste the embed code into your editor.

Early birds make fewer writing mistakes

Our research showed that early birds, defined by our study as those who write online between the hours of 4 a.m. and 8 a.m. in their local time zones, made fewer writing mistakes overall with an average of 13.8 mistakes per 100 words. Night owls, those writing the evening hours away between 10 p.m. and 2 a.m., were more error-prone with 17 mistakes per 100 words.

When it comes to platforms, writers tend to make fewer spelling, grammar, and punctuation blunders when writing blog posts than they do in either email or social media. There’s also a prime time for blogging if you want to write more accurately—between 1:00 p.m. and 5:00 p.m. During that period, blog writers made just 3.7 errors per 100 words.

Writers made more mistakes in emails than in blog posts (11.8 per 100 words for the early birds, and 14.3 for the night owls.) The next time you’re firing off an electronic missive, pay attention to spelling. Spelling errors accounted for over half of the mistakes made in email communiques.

It’s probably no surprise that people make the most grammatical gaffes in social media, where communication tends to be more casual and writers often use slang and, particularly on Twitter, abbreviations or text-speak. On average, writers make three times as many mistakes in social media posts as they do in email.

In each online writing category, early birds wrote with more accuracy than their night owl counterparts. Night owls who want to hone their abilities should consider learning the differences between commonly confused words. In fact, night owls confuse words 66% more often than early birds. If homonyms and other mistakes trip you up, here are a few articles to help you sharpen your skills:

• Apostrophe Mistakes (e.g. let’s vs. lets)
• Too vs. To
• Everyday vs. Every Day
• Than vs. Then
• Of vs. Off

Night owls have smarts

The circadian rhythm is the biological cycle of activity and rest that nearly all animals have. In the time before electricity and technology, we human animals were primarily diurnal—active during the daylight hours, when we could see well and heed the proverb to make hay while the sun shines. But as we developed technology that allowed us to be active and even productive into the hours after dark, some of us adopted the tendency to stay up late, becoming night owls.

In a 2009 study, evolutionary psychologist Satoshi Kanazawa hypothesized that humans who developed a tendency to be nocturnal were adopting evolutionarily novel values. As technology advanced, night owls advanced to do something their ancestors hadn’t—stay up later and wake later. That evolutionary step, Kanazawa believed, could predict that people with higher IQs were more likely to be nocturnal than those with lower IQs. Kanazawa’s research, using a large sample of young Americans, bore out this hypothesis—children with higher IQs grew to be more nocturnal adults.

Although night owls may need to be more careful while writing during the evening hours, science shows that innate intelligence probably isn’t a factor.

Good writing can happen at any time

When do you do your best writing? Whether or not you’ve noticed a tendency to be sharper by day or night, one thing’s for certain—good writing depends on proofreading. Take a moment to double-check your blog posts, emails, and social media shares so your writing will shine at every time of day.

Commonly Confused Word Pairs

By Laura Wallis for The Stir by CafeMom

Words that sound alike but have different meanings and spellings are called homophones, and especially for kids who are just learning to spell, they can cause trouble every time. There are some rules to help budding writers remember the trickiest homophones, but in many cases it’s just a matter of memory. There, their . . . they’ll get them in time.

Its and It’s

This pair is tough because apostrophes are often used to denote possessives—but not in this case. It’s is short for it is. So, “The dog wags its tail because it’s time to eat.”

Your and You’re

Kids (and even some grown-ups) get caught on this pair a lot, and it drives grammar-loving parents nuts. Your is possessive, while you’re is short for you are. “You have to know your rights,” but “I know, you’re right.”

There, they’re, their

The first of this trio is the easiest to remember: Just start here, then go over there by adding a T. They’re is short for they are. The last one, their, is possessive and you just have to remember that you add an I in the middle: “They got their ball and went home.”

Close and Clothes

You could clean up the clothes from the floor, or just be lazy and close the door. Reminding kids that clothes means clothing can help them keep this pair straight.

So and Sew and Sow

Only in The Sound of Music is sol(silent L) “a needle pulling thread.” The right way to spell what you’re doing when you stitch on a button or fix a seam is sew. If you’re outside spreading seeds or planting, you’re sowing. So, you’ll just have to commit these to memory.

Complement and compliment

This one is more challenging than some other examples here. You use complement when talking about things that go well together, like “That shirt complements your skin tone.” It can also be a noun, referring to a complete set. A compliment, on the other hand, is a nice thing to say. To remember the difference, think “I paid you a compliment.”

Through and Threw

“He threw the ball through the window.” Remind yourself that threw is the past tense of throw, and they only vary by one letter. If you’re walking through a tunnel, or something is flying through a window, it is traveling—and the longer word fits.

Affect and Effect

These words are similar in usage and meaning, so are extra tricky. But in most cases, one is a noun and the other a verb. Think the effect to remember that effect is the noun form.

Of course, you add an extra wrinkle when affect is a noun (She has a false affect) and effect is a verb (We are working to effect a change), but those usages are less common, especially in kids’ writing.

Accept and Except

To accept something is to agree to it. To except is to rule something out. “I accept that you’re a better speller than I am.” “I love all of my classes, except gym.” Think ex for things you want to get rid of.

Knew and New

“You knew these already, but to kids, they’re all brand new.” Early writers commonly misspell knew, because of that pesky silent k. But once they remember that it’s the past tense of know (which is different from no) they won’t mess it up again.

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Laura Wallis is a freelance writer and editor specializing in all things family, home, food, and health. She currently lives in New Jersey with her husband, two children, and dog—none of whom take grammar as seriously as they should. She writes for The Stir by CafeMom.