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Fancy? Fundamental? Or just plain frustrating to deal with? Accent marks draw a mixed reaction from people. So, do we really need them? Let’s take a look. What is an accent mark, anyway? Accent marks are diacritic marks, which are added to a letter or character to set them apart from others and “give it a particular phonetic value, to indicate stress, etc.” That makes sense, …
As children, we quickly learned writing a paragraph requires some advance planning, and without proper structure, paragraphs can end up overly long or choppy. Although there really isn’t a required number of sentences to make a paragraph, there are some guidelines you might want to consider. Paragraphs are meant to express a central idea, and they can be composed of any number of sentences as …
Prep for high school by practicing these writing activities Most middle school students aren’t fully prepared for high-school writing assignments. Help your middle-schooler get ready for high-school essays and tests with these engaging activities. Writing narratives Read this article about famous grumps in literature. Write a short story in the Thesaurus.com Writing Tool about navigating our current situation with one of those grumps as the …
Writing a murder mystery seems deceptively simple. After all, the ingredients are practically baked in. You’ve got three essential characters: the victim, the murderer, and the detective. And the plot is straightforward: the victim is murdered; the detective finds out who did it. But don’t mistake this simple framing for a lack of complexity. Within this space, there are countless possibilities. Every element —from the setting …
When it comes to writing business letters, there are books, templates, and guidelines galore. Work emails, on the other hand, are a whole new game, relatively speaking. The rules aren’t nearly as rigid, and, in many ways, they’re still being defined. While emails lend themselves to a more casual tone than formal business letters, you do still want to keep your communication professional. This murky …
Text messaging just might be the Wild West of communication. As we race to keep up with our messages and text out speedy replies, all the rules of English spelling, grammar, and punctuation seem to go out the window. Want to spell you with just the letter U? Or skip words altogether? (“Sup?”) Go for it! Depending on your audience, that can be totally fine …
Is plagiarism simply copying words? Or is it more complicated than that? What’s the definition of plagiarism? The dictionary defines plagiarism as “the unauthorized use or close imitation of the language and thoughts of another author and the representation of them as one’s own original work.” Plagiarism, then, is not just lifting sentences from another writer’s work and claiming them as your own. If a writer duplicates …
A cover letter is a one-page formal letter to a prospective employer about a position you seek. When applying for a job, you might be asked to provide a cover letter along with your résumé or CV. The two work together. Your résumé provides a dry list of facts about your experience. Your cover letter is your first chance to show the prospective employer who …
Writer’s block, ugh. It’s one of the most frustrating parts of the craft. You sit down to put pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard, as the case may be), and nothing comes out. Your mind is blank, your thoughts a messy mush of nothingness, and so you sit … and stare some more. It’s a feeling that has plagued writers since the beginning of …
It’s the great generational debate … There was a time when every period, question mark, or exclamation point was followed by two spaces. These days, depending on what you’re reading, you can find either one or two spaces between the end of one sentence and the beginning of another. The use of single vs. double-spacing after periods has become a great generational debate, with everyone …
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Jun 5, 2020