Why Mistake-free Writing on Your Phone Is So Valuable

Remember when phones were used exclusively for making phone calls? (Hard to believe, right?) Now we use our smartphones for all sorts of fun things . . . like sending text messages, answering emails, posting on Facebook, commenting on our favorite cat videos, and even finding true love.

While the freedom and flexibility of using a mobile device is awesome—the frustration that comes from typing on a tiny touch screen is not so great.

No matter how accurate your typing skills are on a full-size qwerty keyboard, it’s inevitable that you’re going to hit some wrong letters when typing on your smartphone. And then features like autocorrect have a way of making things extra interesting.

Text exchange with my 12 year old daughter yesterday #autocorrect pic.twitter.com/ugIuFPKlaF

— David J. Doorey (@TheLawofWork) July 22, 2015

These garbled messages are occasionally hilarious, but more often they’re confusing, and sometimes they can be pretty embarrassing.

If you’re tired of dealing with annoying typos and punctuation issues on your phone, we’ve got some good news. Grammarly has made the jump to iOS! (Don’t worry, we’re coming to Android soon.)

Typing on a tiny keyboard may always be a chore, but thanks to the Grammarly Mobile Keyboard, you can say so long to embarrassing messages and horrendous grammar. Here are three reasons mistake-free writing on your phone is so valuable.

1Clearer Communication

Being misunderstood can cause problems. If you’ve ever texted your partner a grocery list, you may have figured this out. (You needed red sauce, not red socks. How was that not obvious?)

It’s important to make your meaning crystal clear the first time around. Whether you’re texting a coworker your lunch order or creating an important event on Facebook, we think using your phone should make communication easier, not harder.

Our new mobile keyboard catches those easy-to-make mistakes in punctuation and spelling. So the next time you’re submitting a support ticket for your favorite app, the help desk will know you’re having trouble with “direct messaging” and not “dotweb meditating.”

And when you comment on your friend’s baking blog, fellow readers will understand that “carrot cake” is your favorite, not “carpet cake” (which may lead to some awkward questions).

2It Saves You Time

Don’t you love getting things right the first time? It’s hard to avoid errors when you type on your smartphone, and having to go back and fix mistakes in every message can get pretty tedious.

But when your errors are fixed instantly while you’re typing, you no longer have to waste time manually correcting them.

…Or sending multiple follow-up messages to clarify what you tried to say in your original message.

…Or apologizing for the nonsense you wrote in your original message.

With efficient, error-free writing, your message is ready to send as soon as you finish it. You won’t have to stress over missing an error in that important email to your client or worry about texting your boss something that will be embarrassing later.

3It Helps You Make a Positive Impression

Using correct grammar is essential for maintaining your credibility in business—both as an individual knowledge worker and when you’re communicating on behalf of your company.

Life and work can get busy though, and sometimes you’ll need to answer important work emails even when you’re not at your desk. Mistake-free writing on your phone will help you keep your communication at the same level of professionalism your clients and colleagues expect, despite being away from your computer.

So when a potential client needs a quick turnaround on an estimate, you can use your phone to type a detailed, error-free response on your train ride home.

Or when your boss sends you an urgent question about your TPS report while you’re out to lunch, there’s no need to rush back to the office. You can quickly respond on your phone with a well-written reply, then get back to chatting with your server about the “flair” on their vest.

via GIPHY

And it turns out good grammar isn’t just important for your professional life, it matters for your dating life too.

A Match.com study found that 88% of women users and 75% of men said grammar usage in messaging was the single “most important quality” they judged a potential date on.

Ouch.

Similarly, another survey found that almost half of all singles using the Zoosk dating site considered poor grammar to be a deal breaker. Many participants saw bad grammar as an indication that someone was unintelligent, uneducated, or “lazy,” and an impressive 72% were “turned off” by bad spelling.

So, there are some great benefits to staying on top of your grammar game when writing with your phone: greater clarity and speed when typing, showing up as the successful professional you are, and making the best impression possible when communicating with potential dates.

If you haven’t downloaded the new Grammarly keyboard for your smartphone yet, click here to try it out!

Brought and Bought—Learn the Difference Quickly

Brought and bought are two words are often confused with each other, particularly when one first learns English. They are both irregular verbs with an -ough- construction—a combination that trips many up with both pronunciation and spelling.

The Difference between “Brought” and “Bought”

Brought is the past tense and past participle of the verb to bring, which means “to carry someone or something to a place or person.”

Bought is the past tense and past participle of the verb to buy, which means “to obtain something by paying money for it.”

Both brought and bought rhyme with cot, tot, and plot.

Legend has it that European explorers bought Manhattan for twenty-four dollars.

Alex brought a cup of coffee to his exhausted mother.

Bought implies an economic transaction; brought implies the transport of something (or someone).

Conjugating Bought and Brought

To buy

Present Tense	I buy	you buy	he/she/it buys	we buy	you buy	they buy
Simple Past Tense	I bought	you bought	he/she/it bought	we bought	you bought	they bought
Present Participle	I am buying	you are buying	he/she/it is buying	we are buying	you are buying	they are buying
Past Participle	I/you/we/(s)he/it/they bought	—	—	—	—	—

To bring

Present Tense	I bring	you bring	he/she/it brings	we bring	you bring	they bring
Simple Past Tense	I brought	you brought	he/she/it brought	we brought	you brought	they brought
Present Participle	I am bringing	you are bringing	he/she/it is bringing	we are bringing	you are bringing	they are bringing
Past Participle	I/you/we/(s)he/it/they brought	—	—	—	—	—

Why Do We Have the Spellings “Brought” and “Bought”?

As funny as it would seem to use buyed and bringed as past tenses of to buy and to bring, you might be wondering how these irregular verbs came to be spelled so differently in the first place. The truth is, these two verbs have been irregular in English for more than a thousand years. No kidding!

In Old English, which was in use roughly from the fifth century to the eleventh, the verb bycġan meant the equivalent of our verb to buy and had the past tense bohte. Similarly, the equivalent past tense of to bring was brohte. Both are ancient words that can be traced to Proto-Germanic origins and perhaps even further back. The h in the middle of these two words represent a hard sound similar to the Scottish h in loch.

Suffice it to say that by the time the French invaded England in 1066, bohte and brohte were firmly ensconced in the language. Over time, the French influence on English regularized the spelling of the hard, middle sound of these words, and others like them, to gh. This is how words containing ough came to be part of our language. The spelling has survived the ages, even though the original pronunciation has not.

Bought and brought have proved their staying power, and unless you plan on living upwards of a thousand years, you are not likely to see a simplified spelling of either of them. Although you never know—there are little spelling rebellions thriving in our text messages these days, like nite for night and thru for through. If one of those words becomes standard, perhaps the whole gh dynasty will come tumbling down someday.

Now that we have sorted out bought and brought, perhaps you will want to learn more about other commonly confused words.

10 Simple Errors People Make During a Job Search

Would you like some good news about errors? The simplest mistakes to make are the easiest to correct. If you’re having a frustrating job search, it’s probably because you’re making these ten simple job search mistakes.

1 Failing to Make a Strong First Impression

Never forget that while you are searching for the perfect job, employers are searching for the ideal employee. If your resume doesn’t stand out, you’ll never get an interview. First, tailor your resume to each job posting by demonstrating you possess the desired qualifications listed in the advertisement. Then, reinforce your strongest points by including a pain letter with your application. With a little TLC, the attention to detail and experience reflected in your resume will serve as a fine introduction.

2 Missing Opportunities to Network

Of course, you bring your resume and business cards to job fairs and networking events. But if these are the only times you think about networking, you’re probably missing excellent opportunities. For example, have you ever thought about keeping in touch with previous managers? Even if you don’t ever want to return to your former position, these people may be able to let you know about new developments. Also, if they change companies, they may remember you when they’re building a new team. You can also try to check back occasionally with companies whose interviews or offers you declined. You might try: “I loved your work environment when I came to interview for the administrative position. I declined it because I would flourish in a more creative role. When I saw your opening for a creative director, I knew I should reach out to you.”

3 Failing to Recognize the Importance of Writing

If you are applying for a non-academic job, do your writing skills matter? Absolutely, according to MBA.com. Employers consider communication to be the most valuable of the top five skill sets for all recent graduates. (The others are teamwork, technical, leadership, and managerial skills.) If you don’t display writing ability, you won’t be able to compete with your peers. So, write the cover letter, even if it’s optional.

4 Spelling and Grammar Mistakes

Speaking of writing, the number of people who fail to proofread would surprise you. Even if you haven’t used any complex or unfamiliar expressions, carefully read over every piece of communication with a potential employer, including email subject lines, document titles, phone numbers, and addresses. Take international spelling differences into consideration if you are applying for employment in a foreign country.

5 Bombing an Elevator Pitch

An elevator pitch is a brief summary of who you are and what talents you have. In formal interviews, interviewers may ask you to tell them about yourself. If you practice an effective elevator speech in advance, you’ll avoid the tendency to ramble. Your clearly stated expressions will indicate that you are confident in your abilities. As you may have guessed from the name, not every elevator pitch happens in a formal setting. Be ready to talk about yourself wherever you happen to run into someone influential.

6 Too Much Information

Recruiters may not warn you that you’re oversharing, but they hate TMI. Hiring managers want to know an overview of your applicable skills in as short a time as possible. Be succinct. Keep your resume to one page of the most relevant highlights.

7 Limiting Yourself to Online Vacancies

You’ll find lots of intriguing openings advertised on online job boards such as Monster and CareerBuilder. However, only about 20% of vacancies are ever posted online, according to Payscale. Besides missing many possible opportunities, you also have a huge pool of competition if you limit your focus to online listings. Expand your job hunt to include college career centers, job fairs, and employment agencies. Ask your friends and family to keep their ears open too. Never underestimate the power of word-of-mouth.

8 Surprising Your References

Let your references know that you are job hunting. Otherwise, they may be scrambling to remember your fine points (or even worse, who you are) when they get the call.

9 Follow Up All Inquiries

It’s not enough to turn in an application. Contact a specific person in human resources by phone or email after you submit your application materials. Within a few days of your interview, send a follow-up note or email to thank hiring managers for their time.

10 Relax

If you stress too much about finding a job, you might arrive at an interview a frazzled mess. Take the time between jobs to travel, catch up with family and friends, and enjoy your hobbies.

Are you guilty of one or more of these common job search mistakes? Why not work on correcting them today? Doing so may be your first step toward finding employment.

6 Tips for Writing Well on Social Media

There are 1 million links shared, 2 million friends requested, and 3 million messages sent on Facebook every 20 minutes. Twitter users send 9,100 tweets every second. More than 60 percent of all Americans have at least one social media profile — and many use this profile daily. Whether you love it or hate it, communication on social media is a fact of life.

Unfortunately, the nuances of communicating on social media escape many people. This can be frustrating for those who cherish the written word. However, it’s definitely possible to write well and find your voice on any platform. Here are six tips to improve your social posts.

Use Your Casual Voice

Social media is made for the casual voice, even for users on professional networks. The focus is on the social aspect of communication. It’s about starting a conversation and engaging with others in your network. Ask questions, offer insight, and avoid the colorless “business-speak” that clutters so much business and professional writing. Your social voice should feel like talking with a friend — a grammatically correct friend.

Keep It Short and Simple

Social media isn’t the place for deep musings, long rants, or well-reasoned arguments. If you have a long piece you want to share with your readers, link to it, and keep your commentary short. While Facebook allows around 400 characters plus a link, it’s best to stick to around 200 characters, or 40 words or fewer. Of course, Twitter’s 140-character limit makes pithy writing not only a virtue, but a necessity.

Use Action-Oriented Language

The point of using social media in business or at work is to get your followers to do something, whether it’s read an article, watch a video, join a conversation, or attend an event. A good formula for a social media post starts with a thought-provoking question and an invitation for your followers to take action. Try this: “Ever wonder what really goes on in the White House kitchen? I loved this great interview with Exec Chef Cristeta Comerford. Tell me what surprised you the most.”

Use Pronouns

Writing on social media should feel intimate for your followers, even if you have thousands of them. Use “I,” “me,” and “you” in your updates and posts. Social media is a conversation between colleagues or friends, not a lecture from on high. Write as if you’re talking to one person, not a mass audience.

Play with Punctuation and Capitalization

Don’t be afraid to break a few rules to convey emphasis or emotion on social media. While writing in all caps is generally frowned upon in business writing, it’s perfectly okay to emphasize a word or two with capital letters. Using an exclamation point or two is also acceptable to show excitement or emotion. With the space limits on social media platforms, these devices help convey emotion and tone.

Don’t Forget to Edit

You might be tempted to operate in draft mode on social media, but that carries real risk. Writing in a conversational tone to a large audience leaves plenty of room for misinterpretation, especially when your word count is restricted. There’s a good case to be made that social media posts need more editing than formal writing, not less, especially if you’re posting for an employer. At the very least, have a co-worker or friend read your post before publishing to make sure your meaning is clear.

Social media is a powerful tool for networking and engaging with customers, colleagues, friends, and influencers in your areas of interest or expertise. Keep it casual and concise — and be sure to edit for clarity.

Which social media platforms do you use most? Have you ever published a post you wish you hadn’t?

Have You Become More or Less Careful with Your Writing Over Time?

The Essential Résumé Template

There are two things you need to keep in mind when you’re creating a résumé. First, you should be aware that a lot of recruiters and employers use special software that searches your résumé for specific keywords. Even when your résumé does get seen by human eyes—and this is the second thing you need to remember—the employer will take only six seconds to make a decision about how good of a fit you might be for the job.

To make sure your résumé gives you at least a fighting chance of finding employment, it would be a good idea to develop a résumé template. And that’s where we can help, by giving you the information you need to write each section and arrange them according to your strengths.

The Makings of a Résumé

The average résumé contains the following sections: contact information, résumé introduction, education, professional experience, skills. You can also add a section with special honors, activities, and even hobbies, but we will focus on the five sections that are usually seen in a résumé.

Depending on the arrangement of the sections, résumés are divided into three types: the chronological, the functional, and the combination format. In all three of them, the contact information goes at the top of the résumé and is followed by the résumé introduction.

If you choose the most commonly used format, the chronological one, you will follow the contact info and introduction sections with professional experience, education, and skills. Students might want to place education before professional experience if they don’t have a lot of professional experience.

In the functional and the combination format, the emphasis is on the skills section, which should follow the contact information section and the résumé introduction. The professional experience and education are placed after the skills section, with a slight difference in how you list the items in the section.

These are the choices you have regarding the format, but do you know which one you should choose? Put your strongest section closer to the top of the résumé. If you’re applying for a job for which you have plenty of relevant experience, it makes sense to choose the chronological format. If, on the other hand, you’re changing industries or have a chaotic professional history, one of the two other formats might suit you better. When you choose the format, you can start making the résumé from the top down.

Contact Information

Your contact information should include your name, address, phone number, and email address, plus a link to a portfolio or website and possibly even a link to your LinkedIn profile.

You should place your name, in bold and a slightly larger font than the rest of the résumé, on the very top. Below it, you should write your address, or at least the city and the state you live in, and then list your phone number and email address, maybe even on the same line. Your personal website and social media profiles should only be included in the contact information if they can serve as your portfolio. Social media managers, for example, can include a link to their Facebook pages, and web designers can include links to their personal websites if they designed them.

The one thing you should be aware of is that contact information, even though it should be on the top of the résumé, should not be placed in a header, as some of the software used to scan résumés cannot read headers.

Résumé Introduction

The introduction is where you would put your professional summary, a branded statement, or the objective statement.

Objective statements used to be the only way to go for a résumé introduction—a brief statement of what you want to achieve with your résumé with a reference to why you think you should achieve it. Objective statements are a mix of your goals and your experience, although some sources advise you to remove the part about your goals and instead present a summary of your professional experience (or a statement about who you are and what you’re about if you don’t have a lot experience).

Professional Experience

In the professional experience section, list the relevant jobs you previously held. They should follow a simple template: for each job, write the name of the company, its location, your job title, and the dates of your employment. If you want to make the gaps in your employment look smaller than they really are, you can write only the years of your employment; otherwise, it’s usual to use the month and the year.

Each job you held should be followed by a few bullet points which list your achievements and duties. It would also be a good idea to include a quantifiable data points. For example, if you were responsible for hiring new staff at a job you had, include the number of staff members you hired. Also, don’t use the formulation “responsible for hiring new staff.” Use active verbs instead, and say “hired twelve new staff members.”

Education

Unless you’re fresh out of college and don’t have a lot of skills or professional experience, your education section should be pretty straight-forward—the name of your college, your degree, and the year you graduated. If you didn’t go to college but have skills and experience, you could list the name of your high school, its location, the year you graduated, and your GPA (if above 3.0).

If you don’t have any work experience, you might want to expand your education section and include academic achievements, relevant coursework, and activities. Of course, you should list these things using bullet points.

Skills

If you’ve chosen to create a résumé in the chronological format, your skills section should be the place where you write a couple of skills you haven’t been able to fit in anywhere else in the résumé.

However, if you’re writing a functional or a combination résumé, your skills section is the most important part. Choose between three and five skills that are most relevant to the job you’re applying for and list them in the section. For each of the skills, create a bullet-point list of at least three items that support the skill. Remember to use active verbs and quantifiable points when possible. When you finish, your skills section should look similar to how professional experience sections look in chronological résumés.

How to Emoji at Work: A Guide

Elon Musk is a visionary in many areas, but his memo on acronyms at SpaceX will be forever remembered as one of the greatest workplace satires of all time. The memo, aptly titled “Acronyms Seriously Suck,” explained that “excessive use of made up acronyms is a significant impediment to communication.” Musk then goes on for four paragraphs on why acronyms are ruining the culture at SpaceX.

Some thinkers would have us believe that emojis, like emoticons before them, are similarly ruining office communication. Many professionals point to the ambiguity and potential offensiveness of emojis as reasons to avoid them, and they’re not wrong. Emojis can easily be misinterpreted, and while their novelty makes them exciting, it can also detract from the message you’re trying to communicate to a colleague or client.

Of course, this means that using emojis at work is not mandatory, since they are still unacceptable in many contexts. However, emojis can provide helpful subtext or levity to a situation, allowing the recipient of a chat or email to know how it should be interpreted. If you are going to venture into the world of emoji-laden workplace communication, keep these things in mind.

Check Culture Fit

At this point, most workplaces accept emojis in informal modes of communication, like Slack or Google Hangouts. However, if you work in a formal or more conservative industry, it’s a good idea to wait for someone else to send the first emoji. If you have Slack, you can always look at the chat history and see if emojis are a common addition to your public channels.

If you are chatting or emailing, it’s best to wait for someone senior to you to send an emoji before you try out your latest string of sunflowers and laughing-while-crying emojis. Also, it should be noted that while emojis are often acceptable in interoffice communication, you should be careful before inserting them into emails or correspondence with clients, partners, or customers.

Double-Check Your Emoji Meanings

We’ve given this piece of advice before, but for good reason. Studies show that emojis can have different meanings depending on the country you’re in, the device you use, or even the conversation prior to the emoji. There are some commonly-confused emojis you can avoid, but regardless of the emoji you’re using, make sure your recipient will understand the emotion and intent it represents before you send.

Use Smileys to Soften Bad News

It has been shown that one of the most common use-cases for emojis at work is to show that a message is positive. To paraphrase The Atlantic, the problem with work chat is often that electronic messages are devoid of inflection. In longform writing like emails, you have the space to compensate for this lack of subtext by using extra positive words or phrases. But when you’re sending a quick Gchat to a colleague, you don’t have space to fully compensate for the aloof nature of shorthand text conversation. That’s when a positive, smiling emoji will go a long way in building positive interactions and connections with your colleagues.

Make Sure Everyone Is in on the Joke

Another helpful way to use emojis at work is to indicate that you’re joking. Below are some of the most common emojis that indicate sarcasm, but you can use a variety of emojis to show you’re just kidding. Remember, though, that this usage is probably best reserved for colleagues you know well, not your manager at a brand-new gig. Do you use emojis at work? Tell us more about your experience in the comments below.