Grammar Rules

The Best Places to Find Free Grammar Help Online

There are dozens of places to find free grammar help online. In this article, we take a look at ten of the best.

Challenge Winner: a case for lowercase

What writing rules do you like to break? What writing rules do you always follow? How important are grammar rules when it comes to good writing?

Which Grammar Rules Do You Follow? And When Is It Okay to Break Them?

Grammar and writing rules are important, but following them isn't the ultimate goal. Clear and compelling writing is. And sometimes, you need to ignore the writing rules in order to make your point.

What is the Best Salutation for an Email?

How you open an email, especially to someone you don’t know, is your only chance to make a good first impression. In this article, we explain the best ways to start off a cold email.

What’s Better: Yours Sincerely or Yours Faithfully?

What's better? "Yours sincerely" or "yours faithfully"? It depends on which side of the pond you fall.

Mr., Mrs., Ms., and Miss: Everything You Need to Know About Titles

When do you use Mr.? Mrs.? Miss? In this article, we break down how to use titles for men and women.

Do You Italicize Book Titles?

Back in the day, people taught students to underline the titles of books, magazines, plays, songs, movies, and other titled works. Now, in most instances, you italicize book titles, songs, and other full-length works like movies. In this guide, we'll cover what to italicize and when.

Are Your Adjectives Powerful?

An adjective is a word that names an attribute of a noun. Some are strong and paint clear, specific pictures of the thing they are describing. Some are weak and vague and don’t tell us much. Let’s start with an example...

Interjections: When to Use Them

Zoinks! Humbug! Bada bing! Ruh-roh! Holy Hole in a Doughnut, Batman! An interjection is like a word bomb used to get someone's attention. In this piece, we examine what interjections are and when to use them.

Are You Using Apostrophes Correctly?

Take the Homonym/Homophone Challenge!

Hung up on homonyms? Learn the top five most common word confusions and how to be precise in your meaning.

The Internet's Best List of Clichés

To cliché or not to cliché, that is the question. This comprehensive list of clichés will help you decide what to use or leave behind in your writing.

Dissecting the Trickiest Plurals in English

Are you getting these tricky English plurals wrong? In this post we cover plurals of all kinds, including regular, irregular, Latin, Greek, invariant, and more.

What are Phonemes, Graphemes, and Digraphs?

Each sound that you hear in a word is a Phoneme. It’s the smallest unit of sound that makes up a complete word. This is not to be confused with the letter itself; Phonemes are only the sounds made. There are 44 Phonemes in the English language, consisting of 24 consonant sounds and 20 vowel sounds. Think of the different combinations of consonants and vowels (like “ch” or “ea”) that make unique sounds.

When You Actually Should Use Passive Voice

There's an exception to every rule and it's no different with passive voice. Here are a few instances where you might actually want to use it.