Commas and Semicolons… The Comma (or Semicolon?) Chameleon
“Comma? Semicolon? Aaargh!! I’ll just pick one… I figure I have a 50% chance of getting it right.”
Does this sound like you? If so, you’ve come to the right place. Let’s raise your average.
Video in Blogs: What Would You Like to See Here?
Many new bloggers or prospective bloggers think that embedding video into a blog post is hard. Nonsense! If you’re producing your own video, certainly the production and editing may be involved. But, if you’ve got a clip already on YouTube that you’re eager to share, it’s a piece o’ cake. Find that clip, cut and paste, and you’re done!
How Long Should My Resume Be?
Job seekers often ask how long their resume should be. Some people can barely stretch theirs to a single page, while others have difficulty fitting it into four pages. What makes this decision so difficult? You want to include all of the relevant information that will inevitably get you hired. However, you also don’t want to overwhelm the human-resources personnel who are already swamped with work and could potentially be going through hundreds or thousands of resumes. If yours is too long, HR staff will skim it too quickly and miss the important points, or they’ll simply file it into the garbage because they don’t have the time to read it.
Resumes for Recent Grads: Back to the FUTURE
A common misconception about resumes is that they are meant to describe what you did in your past jobs. In actuality, resumes are most effective when they are written from a FUTURE perspective. In other words, your resume will work if you think about what a potential employer would want to know about how you WILL perform. What experience do you have that will make you a contribution to their firm or organization?
Resumes for New Grads: 5 Great Tips to Organize your “Education” Section
The first thing to know about your Education section is that it probably goes FIRST on your resume (after your header of course). Why? Because it’s what you’ve done most recently, so it is most relevant to your potential employer. (There may be limited exceptions to this rule for recent graduates who have an extensive and relevant work history. If you think you are one of those people, ask an expert for advice.)
The following are five useful tricks for organizing your Education section – so you pack in lots of information without taking up half the space on your resume:
Can You Right Write? 10 MORE Common Writing Mistakes 2 Avoid
There’s a game embedded in this article! In the last example for each section, see if you can choose the correct word from the [two/too] options in brackets. If [your/you’re] not sure, the answer will be revealed in the next section.
Worst Cover Letter Advice: Use a Quotation in Your Cover Letter
Should you “season” your cover letter with a great quote? Definitely not! Read why.
Can You Right Write? 10 Common Writing Mistakes to Avoid
Note To Readers from Sam Diener: There is no possible way that I could have written this article. I rely on two editors to make sure my grammar is correct! So I invited Ms. Brenda Bernstein, the Essay Expert, to come along and write this series of two articles for me. She is quite the grammarian, and she is much smarter than I. So you all had better listen to her – and enjoy!
The “Blog” of “Unnecessary” Quotation Marks
Last week I wrote an article about quotation marks, and I did not cover the topic of their overuse. Quotation marks are often used to “emphasize” a word when they are grammatically unnecessary or incorrect. Thankfully, another blogger has taken on the gallant task of locating errant quotation marks so that I can take a…
The Quandary of Quotation Marks
Quotation marks are a beloved form of punctuation in the English language, used to indicate a verbatim report on what someone said, and used in a great deal of business writing. They are often misused. This week I will clear up some misconceptions held by many about proper usage of these marks.
