Why Do We Need Style Guides?

If you don’t like to follow the rules, style guides are a necessary evil. They give uniformity and structure to writing and are an invaluable resource when writing papers in university; the skill of writing according to a style guide will also help you in your career. They teach you how to avoid plagiarism by correctly citing works that you’ve read and obtained information from.

Style guides outline the standards for writing citations and formatting a document. The rules vary among different style guides; the best one to use depends on which publication, organization, or field you’re writing for. Four of the most commonly used style guides in universities are:

APA Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association: The standard for educational, social, and behavioral sciences Citations in APA style include the last name of the author and year of publication. APA-style documents almost always have a title page. Sources will be on a “references” page.

Chicago The Chicago Manual of Style: For arts and humanities Citations take the form of footnotes or endnotes. Chicago style doesn’t necessarily require a title page, but it does require a bibliography page.

MLA MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers: Used for humanities and literature writing Citations include the author names and exact page numbers. MLA style doesn’t necessarily require a title page. Sources will be on a “works cited” page.

Harvard Used primarily for scientific writings Citations include the last names of authors and years of publication. Sources will be on a bibliography page.

If you find style guides burdensome now, you may take comfort in knowing that the more frequently you reference them, the less likely you’ll need to do so in the future, because the rules may become part of your memory over time. Another option is to use a tool like Citation Machine that will do the work for you, but these tools aren’t flawless, so you may need to cross-check with a style guide anyway. No matter how you do it, what matters most is that you reference your work properly.

Grammar Basics: When to Use I or Me?

Mistakes with objective pronouns often occur when we have to choose between you and me and you and I. Because you is the same in both the subjective and the objective case, people get confused about I and me. The way to check this is to remove the second-person pronoun.

When he’s finished reading the book, he’ll give it to you or I.

If the sentence read “…he’ll give it to I,” we would know that “I” is wrong.

When he’s finished reading the book, he’ll give it to you or me.

To learn more about grammar and to help us celebrate National Grammar Day this March, visit our new resource page.

Do You Know the Correct Answer to Our Pop Quiz Question?

In a recent Grammarly Pop Quiz email, we asked readers how they would correct this sentence: I’m looking forward to purchasing tickets for the 2018 winter Olympics.

A: Capitalize the “W” in winter. B: Make “O” in Olympics lowercase. C: Accept the sentence as is.

44 percent of these readers gave the correct answer, A. Did you choose correctly?

Seasons are only capitalized when they’re used as proper nouns, as in the sentence above: The movie will debut in the spring of 2016. (Spring is not used as a proper noun and doesn’t need to be capitalized.) The Springfield Autumn Harvest Festival is my favorite event of the year. (Autumn is part of a proper noun in this sentence as needs to be capitalized.) This winter, I want to learn how to ski. (Winter is not used as a proper noun and doesn’t need to be capitalized.)

In poetry, the names of the seasons are capitalized when they’re personified. For example: It’s that time of year again, when Winter blankets all creatures with somniferous snow and whispers to them, “Rest, children, rest.”

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How long did you study grammar in school?

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Please take the poll and share your thoughts in the comments. We can’t wait to hear from you!

If you are interested in more, check out last week’s poll.

3 Quick Tips to Make Your Cover Letters Better

Guest post from Brie Weiler Reynolds

For job seekers, making a strong first impression is crucial. With employers spending so little time screening cover letters and resumes before deciding if your application will make it to the next round, it’s imperative to use that precious space well. Your cover letter acts as an introduction between yourself and the employer. That’s why it’s so important to take the time to make customized, quality cover letters to help your application stand out.

Employers and recruiters have spent countless hours screening job applicants in their industry, so they will quickly spot a poorly written or generic cover letter. Start off on the right foot with potential employers by making sure your cover letters are as perfect as possible. These three easy tips will help you ensure your cover letters introduce you to an employer in the best possible light.

Don’t start every sentence with “I.”

Because so much of a cover letter is focused on you, it’s very easy to inadvertently start every sentence with “I.” “I have a degree in physics,” “I’ve worked for 10 years in accounting,” “I’ve been working from home for five years.” But when someone else is reading your letter, this approach starts to sound very self-centered and can easily throw their attention off your qualifications and onto your grammatical choices. After you write the first draft of your cover letter, proofread and change most of your sentences to start with something other than “I.”

Avoid cliches and over-used phrasing.

Phrases like “Please find my resume attached,” “To whom it may concern,” “think outside the box,” and keywords like “organized,” “computer proficient,” “passionate,” “team player,” and “dynamic” add absolutely nothing to your cover letter. They’re so overused that employers read right past them, looking for any hint of originality in your writing. Use that valuable space to say something meaningful, rather than something everyone else is saying, too.

Stop run-on sentences in their tracks.

Make sure your sentences are short and to-the-point by eliminating any run-on sentences. You should have two to three sentences per paragraph, and three to four paragraphs for one cover letter. An easy way to spot run-ons is to read your cover letter out loud. How many times did you have to stop to take a breath? If you find yourself reading a sentence that turns into a paragraph all by itself, you’ve just found a run-on. Try breaking up those long sentences where you see “and” or “but,” as those are natural stopping points.

Small mistakes like these force the employer to pay attention not to your qualifications as a job applicant, but to your poor writing skills. Whether deserved or not, a recruiter may see these mistakes as evidence of a poor work ethic or an inability to perform the job. Be sure an employer has nothing to focus on except what a qualified candidate you are by writing cover letters that are well-proofed and grammatically correct.

Brie Weiler Reynolds is the Director of Online Content at FlexJobs, the award-winning site for telecommuting and flexible job listings. FlexJobs lists thousands of pre-screened, legitimate, and professional-level work-from-home jobs and other types of flexibility like part-time positions, freelancing, and flexible schedules. Brie provides career and job search advice through the FlexJobs Blog and social media.

Does grammar affect your product choices?

This poll is part of a series that Grammarly is running aimed at better understanding how the public feels about writing, language learning, and grammar.

Please take the poll and share your thoughts in the comments. We can’t wait to hear from you!

If you are interested in more, check out last week’s poll.

Dreamed or Dreamt

Is there a difference between dreamed and dreamt? You might be surprised to find conflicting reports. Some people say that there is no difference. Others say that the two words have different meanings. What’s the real deal?

Dreamt and dreamed are both past tense forms of dream. Dreamt is more common in Britain, while dreamed is more common in other English-speaking countries, including the U.S. Dreamed seems to be more popular than dreamt when talking about sleeping, but when dream has a hopeful, literary sense, dreamt might be used.

More Details About the Verb to Dream

Let’s start with the dictionary definition of “to dream.” To dream is to experience visions of thoughts as you sleep. However, you can also dream while you are awake, when you envision an event, hope for something, or just daydream. To illustrate, here is a quote from Epigrams by Oscar Wilde:

Oh, I dream of dragons with gold and silver scales, and scarlet flames coming out of their mouths, of eagles with eyes made of diamonds that can see over the whole world at once, of lions with yellow manes and voices like thunder. . .

Dreamed or Dreamt—What’s the Difference?

In addition to definitions, you can also search for the past tense of verbs in a dictionary. Merriam-Webster.com lists two forms for dream—dreamed and dreamt. So, the two words have at least one thing in common; they function as the past tense of dream. As you probably guessed, which one you favor depends on where you live. In all varieties of English except British, dreamed is the most common form by a landslide. However, in the United Kingdom, dreamt is almost as prevalent. Here are a couple of examples of dreamed and dreamt, both from ESPN sites. Pay attention to the meaning. Do you see a difference?

“Our goal is gold―we’ve dreamt about it from when we were little kids, laying in bed dreaming about it, getting that gold medal put around our necks on the podium.” ―ESPN W

Cristiano Ronaldo said Portugal [has] “dreamed” of making the final of Euro 2016 “since the very beginning.” ―ESPN FC

Don’t worry if you couldn’t find a difference. There really wasn’t one. Both sentences use dream in the sense of “to hope” for a future goal. Dreamt, if it is chosen, is most often used in this capacity. Writers talking about a sleep state or a waking fantasy are more likely to choose dreamed, as you will find in these literary examples:

He no longer dreamed of storm, nor of women, nor of great occurrences, nor of great fish, nor fights, nor contests of strength, nor his wife. He only dreamed of places now and of the lions on the beach. . . . He never dreamed about the boy. ―Ernest Hemingway, The Old Man and the Sea

I dreamed I flung the violin into a brackish, wind-rippled slough, where the glue would slowly soften until it fell to pieces. I dreamed I laid it on the frozen ground and stepped on it, crushing the thin shell into jigsaw shards. ―Marta Iyer, The Pilgrim’s Book of Hours: A Baroque Migration

Besides the preference for dreamed over dreamt when refering to sleep or fantasy, some writers favor dreamed when duration matters. Here is the dreamt spelling in a sentence where duration is unimportant: The dog dreamt of bones last night. Does it matter whether the dream lasted three or five minutes? No, the main point is that the dog’s dream was about bones. Now, consider this sentence where duration is important: The dog dreamed of bones all night. Now, the focus is on how those bones filled the dog’s dream so much that he dreamed of nothing else. Other times, people decide which form to use based on other factors. For example, consider the “I dreamed a dream” lyrics from Les Misérables. Perhaps the composer just didn’t think “I dreamt a dream” sound right with the melody.

If someone asked you what your dreams were about last night, how would you answer? Would you say, “I dreamed of. . .” Or would you say, “I dreamt of. . .”? If you are British, dreamt is almost as likely a choice as dreamed. American English speakers would probably opt for dreamed, but they are both acceptable options. What is the difference between dreamed and dreamt? You know the answer to that, but what about learned vs. learnt?