Vaccum, Vacuum, or Vacume—Which Is Right?

• Vacuum (spelled like so), means a complete lack of matter, or a device used for sucking up dirt or particles, or to use that device for cleaning.
• Vaccum and vacume are misspellings of vacuum.

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Physicists often talk about vacuums, but the rest of us also use this word when talking about cleaning devices. Spelling the word can be a bit tricky because of the two consecutive u’s, which aren’t often seen in English.

Vaccum, Vacuum, or Vacume—Which Is Correct?

Vacuum is a word of Latin origin that denotes a space containing very little or no matter. A vacuum cleaner (or simply, a vacuum) is a device that uses a partial vacuum to suck up particles of dirt or dust. Cleaning something with a vacuum cleaner is often referred to as vacuuming, so vacuum can also be used a verb—at least in the U.S. Brits often refer to this device as a “hoover” and to the activity as “hoovering.”

Vacuum is always spelled with one c, two u’s, and no e. Spellings such as vaccum, vacume, or vacum are incorrect:

There’s no such thing as a perfect vacume.

Light travels at its top speed only in a vacuum.

We bought a new vaccum cleaner today.

The apartment is dirty because the vacuum cleaner broke down.

Vacuming is my least favorite chore.

Vigorous vacuuming counts as cardio workout, right?

Examples

Studio Roosegaarde’s smog-sucking vacuum tower is actually cleaning up the air in China.

Inhabitat

If you want your vacuum cleaner to keep working as well as it did the day you bought it, you have to keep it clean.

Lifehacker

They said he vacuumed for two to five hours at a time, often leaving the machine running on the balcony, while playing very loud music.

The Local (Sweden)

The road to learning good English is paved with common misspellings. Words like fourty, jist, and carmel are right there with vaccum and vacume, waiting for you to slip up.

Are Dictionaries Still Important?

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.

7 Novels to Read for a Better Vocabulary

People read for a variety of reasons: entertainment, knowledge, understanding. There’s no better way to gain a larger vocabulary than by reading novels of all types and genres. Your high school teachers might have considered the classics the only true literature with educational value, but there are plenty of modern tales that can help you pick up new words to fling around at cocktail parties.

Here are seven novels, both classic and modern, that will grant you a bigger vocabulary. You may want to keep a dictionary on hand while reading!

The Count of Monte Cristo

Alexandre Dumas’ famous adventure novel explores the classic, timeless themes of betrayal, hope, and vengeance, as well as the consequences of those actions. It’s also a great novel for vocabulary purposes — tossing around words like ardent, prodigious, cosmopolite, and apoplexy. Despite this, it’s not a difficult read, making the tale a great place to start for someone working to expand their vocabulary.

Shakespearean Plays

Okay, maybe this is cheating a bit. If you only read one of Shakespeare’s plays, read Hamlet. Many of the references in modern literature are based off the works of the Bard, and the English language, itself, owes much to Shakespeare.

Did you know he invented quite a few of the words used in everyday language?

Love in the Time of Cholera

This modern love story by Gabriel Garcia Marquez was originally written in Spanish, but loses none of its beauty in translation. Telling the story of two lovers separated by distance and circumstance, the book includes words admirable for their sheer beauty — as well as phrases reminiscent of the liquidity of Spanish.

Game of Thrones

The series’ growing popularity is mainly due to the television adaptation. However, the written Game of Thrones far surpasses the silver screen version – not only is the tale more than 1,000 pages long, but George R.R. Martin’s talent with language is something to be admired. Besides using terms that hark back to Middle English, Martin describes the world of Westeros in such detail that all authors can learn a bit about the use of adjectives and adverbs.

Gulliver’s Travels

Jonathan Swift’s scathing satirical work about elitist culture and the Catholic church is one of the greatest novels ever written. Learn for yourself who the Lilliputians and Yahoos are, as well as the meaning of such words as lingua franca, inure, demesne, and declivity.

Ulysses

One of James Joyce’s greatest works, Ulysses is a massive tome. Clocking in at 265,000 words in length, with 30,030 unique words, it is considered one of the most difficult novels in existence to read. However, it is also ranked in the topic 100 of the greatest English novels of all time. Joyce takes great pleasure in using words such as bedraggle, omphalos, and ineluctable. The length of the novel is compounded by the fact readers must keep a dictionary and a notebook beside them. Perhaps the best choice for vocabulary expansion of any novel on this list, Ulysses will challenge even the most veteran of readers.

Slaughterhouse Five

“Everything was beautiful and nothing hurt.” The most famous line from Vonnegut’s ultimate work succinctly wraps up the mood and theme of the novel. A tragic examination of the life of a soldier in World War II, Slaughterhouse Five challenges readers to deeply examine their preconceptions of war and life. Using words such as unmitigated, grotesque, and magnanimity, the vocabulary of Slaughterhouse Five is of a more modern in origin.

If you want to gain a bigger vocabulary, whether for GRE study or simply for conversational usage, there’s no better way than to read. There are so many novels that can help you; don’t feel like you have to only read the classics!

What is your favorite word, and where did you learn it?

Prepositions of Direction

Prepositions of direction give readers a sense of place or location. The following chart lists different prepositions of direction, their definitions, and examples.

Preposition	Meaning	Example
above	higher relative to something else	The milk is above the soda in the refrigerator.
across	on the other side of	My friend lives across the street from me.
along	beside	The ducks are eating along the river.
among	within a group	The girl was sitting among her friends.
around	in a circular way	They told stories around the campfire.
at	indicates a particular point	Meet me at the stop sign.
behind	at the back of	The employees parked behind the store.
below	lower relative to something else	I hung the poster below the mirror.
beside	next to	Come stand beside me.
close to	near	The flowers are close to the produce section.
over	above	The spices are over the sink.
through	from one point to the next	The river runs through the woods.
toward	in the direction of	The man started walking toward the exit.
up	from low to high	The store is right up the road.
down	from high to low	The boy tumbled down the hill.
between	in the space separating two things	The ring fell between the couch cushions.
by	near	The thrift store is by the church.
inside/in	within	Have you ever been inside an abandoned building?
near	close by	The movie theater is by the interstate.
next to	beside	The library is next to the post office.
on	touching something	Put the mail on the table.
onto	moving on top of something	The dog climbed onto the bed.
off	away from	Don’t jump off that wall.
past	on the farther side of	She drove right past the house.
under	below something	The cat slept under the bed.

Some prepositions are trickier than others. For example, it’s not so logical to be on a bus or a train or a plane rather than in one, yet that’s the way we say it. While you are on the plane (i.e., inside the plane), there is also a logo on the plane, and two wings on the plane, though they’re not inside with you. When in doubt about how to use a specific preposition, look up the proper term in a dictionary.

Not-So-Sweet 16: Emoji Overload vs. The One-Word Line

Welcome to the Not-So-Sweet 16 round of March MADness! In our quest to find the most annoying work pet peeve, we’ve had some real battles. Some were obvious choices, while others were more evenly matched. And now, we’re out to determine the winners of each of our “conferences:” chat, email, phone calls, and old-fashioned, in-person talking. Which horrible habit will reign supreme?

Emoji Overload:

��������☠️ These people like to send a string of seemingly useless emojis in work chat, especially in public channels. While they may think it’s cute, it actually shows they have nothing to say.

The One-Word Line:

This Chat Habit Is Annoying. When you receive one word per line over chat, it takes longer to read and is 100 times more irritating.

Beyoncé Was Wrong About This Word

If you’ve ever played Dungeons & Dragons or listened to Destiny’s Child, chances are likely that you have heard the words bugbear and bugaboo. For the D&D players of the world, a bugbear is a hairy, giant-like goblin. For Destiny’s Child fans, a bugaboo is a particularly annoying boy who just won’t stop calling you (or paging you, or showing up to your house unannounced). These definitions aren’t exactly what the words were used for back when they first came into existence during the Middle Ages. In fact, both bugbear and bugaboo have interesting backstories that involve our childhood nemesis, the bogeyman.

Bugbear

1. An ongoing problem; a recurring obstacle or adversity.
2. A source of dread; resentment; or irritation
3. An imaginary creature meant to inspire fear in children.

Though linguists can’t be certain on exactly where the word bogey originated, they all agree that it originally existed as a proper name for the Devil. Scary, right? It’s no wonder, then, that parents began telling their children stories of the bogeyman coming to get them when they didn’t do their chores or go to bed on time or whatever it is that children got reprimanded for in the Middle Ages. At some point, the rhetoric around the bogeyman changed, and instead of becoming a creature that would take children who didn’t go to bed on time, it became the bugbear who would get you if you tried to sneak out at night. As the word might suggest, a bugbear was a bear-like imaginary creature also meant to incite fear in children (and teens). Today, a bugbear isn’t so much a creepy creature or giant-like goblin but a word that represents an ongoing problem; a recurring obstacle or adversity. Some might consider a bugbear to be getting politicians to agree on legislation for public school funding, for example. Alternatively, a bugbear can represent a source of dread, resentment, or irritation. Many Americans, for example, consider doing their taxes a real bugbear.

Bugaboo

1. An imaginary object of fear
2. Something that causes fear or distress out of proportion to its importance

While bugbear is a popular term in Europe, in North America the more popular word is bugaboo and usually refers to a dreadful imaginary object than a creature. In this instance, it turns out that Destiny’s Child got it wrong. When you think about it, that guy who just won’t stop calling you is more of a bugbear than a bugaboo—the guy the girls are singing about is definitely real. If we took Destiny’s Child’s use of bugaboo in the literal sense, it seems like Beyoncé et al. are totally overreacting to the bogeyman instead of protecting their very important personal spaces. Also, once you learn the definition of bugaboo, it makes it hard to look at that cute line of baby accessories that also bears the name quite the same way. Is strolling your baby suddenly an activity that causes fear or distress out of proportion to its importance (the importance being getting your baby from point A to point B)? Is your baby just an imaginary object of fear? I’d like to think not.

So, while the two words are similarly defined (and often appear as synonyms of each other), be careful to make sure you’re using the word with the right definition. Even Beyoncé can lead us astray sometimes.

7 Ghoulish Grammar Gaffes That Will Give You Chills

If you’re too old to be frightened by scary costumes, and you’ve watched so many horror movies that nothing can give you the chills anymore, you might think you’re preparing for a thrill-free Halloween. But we beg to differ. Creepier than the most realistic Halloween costumes, darker than the most terrifying horror movies, there are grammar mistakes—ghoulish and gnarly and gloomy and many other adjectives starting with the letter g. So be careful not to make one of these seven on All Hallows’ Eve. Who knows what might happen if you do?

1 The Ghastly Apostrophe This serious grammar gaffe lurks in Halloween’s other name—All Hallows’ Eve. It contains an apostrophe you shouldn’t dare to forget or misplace. Place it after the s in “hallows” because it’s a plural. You would write “hallow’s” if there were only one hallow to which the eve belongs.

2 The Serial Comma Nothing good can come out of anything serial on Halloween. The serial comma is optional in most cases, but leaving it out can sometimes change the meaning of your sentence. If you say you’re celebrating Halloween with two ghosts, grandma and grandpa, you’ll be saying that your grandparents came back to haunt you. By adding the serial comma and saying that you’re celebrating Halloween with two ghosts, grandma, and grandpa, you’ll be saying that you and your grandparents are having a Halloween party with a couple of ghosts. And that sounds like a much better situation, doesn’t it?

3 Creeped Out Yet? If something creeps you out, you can later say that it creeped you out. But if something creeps up on you on Halloween, can you say that it creeped up on you? You can’t, because the past participle of the verb creep is crept. The only time this irregular verb becomes regular is in the phrasal verb creep out.

4 Dismembered Sentences There’s an old rule that says every sentence has to have a subject and a verb. If you’ve got those two things, you can do whatever you want with the rest of the sentence. But if you dismember your sentence by chopping off a subordinate clause and turning it into a new sentence, you might be making a mistake. Not that it’s always bad to dismember a sentence and use some of its fragments. It’s not. It can be very effective, as long as you don’t overdo it.

5 The Vague Pronoun Reference Too many “thats” and “thoses” at the beginning of sentences can create a thick layer of fog over a text. If Halloween movies have taught us anything, it’s that bad things happen when it’s foggy. Writing becomes difficult to understand when readers have to backtrack and figure out what all those pronouns are referring to. Your text will be less clear, and clarity is the difference between walking toward the strange noise to see what’s making it and running for your life as soon as you hear it.

6 Comma Splices OK, using commas to splice sentences doesn’t make you a mad scientist who splices the DNA of a scorpion with the DNA of a hamster, but you are creating something that doesn’t look quite right. And unlike the mad scientist, you have plenty of other tools at your disposal to create something new that actually makes sense—from dashes to semicolons to conjunctions.

7 The Disappearing Comma You could have sworn you put commas around that non-restrictive element, but now they’re not there and your sentence sounds weird. Looks like you’ve been visited by the disappearing comma, a rare phenomenon that happens when we’re sure we use our commas properly but in reality we don’t. Commas should always follow an introductory element and should always set off a non-restrictive element. It’s also a good idea to throw a comma after the next-to-last item in a list (that’s the serial comma right there). As soon as you learn these rules, the disappearing comma will stop bothering you.