Accоrding tо Salesforce, 78% of customers are more likely to return tо a business that delivers excellent support — even after a mistake. Implementing tools like Linguix can be transformative, helping teams meet these high expectations.

In this article, we’ll explore five key ways Linguix Business can elevate your customer support, helping your team communicate more effectively, resolve issues faster, and improve customer satisfaction, all while maintaining a professional and consistent tone.

Reduce Ticket Resolution Time

Think оf Linguix as a smart assistant fоr your customer service team. It’s an AI tool that helps them write better and faster. It catches mistakes, speeds things up, and makes sure responses are оn point. By eliminating the need for manual proofreading and using pre-made templates for common responses, agents can focus on solving problems more quickly, cutting down the back-and-forth that often drags out resolution times.

For example, one of our clients saw a remarkable improvement in their response times after integrating Linguix into their workflow. By leveraging the platform more frequently, they managed to reduce their average response time from 133 seconds down to 77 seconds — a 42% reduction in just one month! 

Improve Customer Satisfaction Rate

Having happy customers is super important for getting repeat business. Linguix helps support agents communicate better by giving them real-time tips on grammar and writing style. This way, they can send clearer messages to customers that sound more professional.  When messages make sense, there’s less room for confusion. So issues can get fixed faster. And when stuff gets fixed faster, customers feel happier.

American Express says 90% of Americans tell others about customer service experiences. So one good chat with support can make lots of people feel good about a company. Linguix lets agents send responses that sound polished and on-point. This reduces mix-ups with customers and gets problems sorted ASAP. So less headaches for everyone!

Supercharge Your Multilingual Support

In today’s global market, offering multilingual support is no longer optional—it’s a must. In fact, 35% of end users would switch products to one that offers support in their native language. 

With Linguix, support teams can seamlessly handle multilingual interactions, ensuring that language barriers don’t hinder customer satisfaction. By providing AI-powered grammar and style checks in multiple languages, Linguix empowers agents to communicate effectively with a broader customer base, making it easier to meet global customer needs and drive loyalty across different regions.

Enhance Overall Productivity

Linguix can help you increase productivity of your support agents by streamlining everyday tasks for customer support teams. The Linguix Turbo browser extension, equipped with intelligent shortcuts, allows agents to reduce the time spent drafting emails and social media responses by up to 90%. This means quicker replies and fewer delays in handling customer inquiries. 

Additionally, Linguix integrates smoothly with popular contact center software, enabling teams to incorporate its powerful language tools directly into their existing workflows, further boosting efficiency and allowing them to focus more on solving customer problems rather than drafting responses.

Make the Most of Analytics and Reporting

With Linguix, analytics and reporting become powerful tools for improving team performance. Detailed performance stats, error counts, and readability scores for every team member allow you to pinpoint and address issues before they escalate. Email reports offer a clear overview of writing quality across the board.

Additionally, in-depth employee writing activity reports help you identify who may be publishing poor content, enabling you to take corrective action early and ensure your customer communication stays professional and effective.

Final Thoughts

Linguix offers a comprehensive solution for the customer support workflow by addressing multiple key areas: it shortens ticket resolution time, enhances customer satisfaction, boosts productivity, and ensures effective multilingual support. Moreover, its powerful analytics and reporting tools give you the insights needed to address issues early and keep your team’s communication on point. Linguix empowers your support team to deliver better service, faster, and with greater consistency, ultimately driving customer loyalty and business growth.

The post Upgrading Customer Support with Linguix for Business: 5 Ways to Excel appeared first on Linguix Blog.

To check these tools in action, we used two datasets of 1515 English sentences, part of which contained grammar mistakes and the rest of which were correct. All in all, the test datasets featured several thousands of grammar mistakes to detect. 

Below are the results of the performance analysis. 

*Pro/Premium versions of Linguix and Writer.com were benchmarked.

Linguix vs. Writer: the number of mistakes detected 

First off, we compared the number of single tokens, that is, distinct words with mistakes detected by each checker. Linguix was able to find a total of 1,537 mistakes, while Writer’s result amounted to 1,402 mistakes.

Linguix also turned out to be better at identifying incorrect phrases (token spans) with 1,209 mistakes found, while Writer was able to detect only 1,183 faulty spans.

Linguix vs. Writer: skipped mistakes and overall accuracy 

When it comes to false negatives, Writer.com skipped more mistakes both with single tokens (798 vs 661 by Linguix) and token spans (923 vs 896 by Linguix). 

Linguix’s progress

Our team is rigorously working on increasing the quality of Linguix’s grammar-checking model. Since March 2020, we have significantly improved the accuracy of detecting both single words and phrases with mistakes while keeping the number of false positives low.

The post Linguix vs. Writer.com: Grammar Checking Benchmarking Analysis appeared first on Linguix Blog.

For these purposes, we used two datasets containing 1515 sentences in English with both grammar mistakes and correct sentences. To be precise, there were several thousands of grammar mistakes to detect in total. 

Below are the performance comparison results of premium versions of both Linguix and Grammarly.

Linguix vs. Grammarly: which one detected more mistakes

When we analyzed performance based on single tokens (i.e. words with mistakes), Linguix found almost as many mistakes (1554) as Grammarly (1571).

When it comes to token spans (i.e. incorrect phrases), Linguix identified 1275 mistakes, while Grammarly found 1361.

We first measured the quality of grammar checking for our custom dataset. In this case, Linguix achieved an overall accuracy of 72%, while Grammarly demonstrated 76% accuracy:

Then we took a publicly available dataset (BEA). This time Linguix showed an accuracy of 61%, while Grammarly’s accuracy level was just about 45%:

Linguix’s progress

We are constantly working on improving our grammar-checking model quality. For the period starting from March 2020 till August 2022, the quality of identifying both words with mistakes and incorrect phrases has significantly increased:

According to our analysis, the difference between grammar-checking quality when using Linguix and Grammarly is almost unnoticeable.

The post Linguix vs. Grammarly: the Results of Grammar Checking Benchmarking Analysis appeared first on Linguix Blog.

We’ve decided to ask our users and find out if their writing mistakes impacted their lives or careers in any way. Let’s look at their stories and reflect on what they’ve learned from them. 

Ankush Chopra, Consultant and Linguix user

What happened: 

“I was leading a massive change initiative for a large global organization. We were launching a new application for managing our finance operations. I had created an invitation mail for people to sign-up for the upcoming training sessions for the new application. I shared that invitation with my team to see if it creates the “pull” for people to sign-up. In the subject line, I inadvertently wrote “sing-up” instead of “sign-up”. The word sing did not come up in the spellcheck. Once I shared the email with my team, a couple of them started singing. I was left wondering for a few minutes till I spotted the error.

How it turned out:

“The situation did not impact me adversely; we all just laughed for a while and made the change in the email. However, it could have caused a massive embarrassment if I had shared it with 14,000 people without sharing it for a sense check with my team.”

Lessons learned:

“I have become cognizant of the fact that a spellchecker may not always fool-proof your work. Now I always use Linguix which is much beyond a spellchecker, to ensure that grammatical and contextual mistakes get caught before I share my work with others.”

Ann Kristine A. Peñaredondo, Social Media Marketing Strategist, Pin To Top Podcast Host and Linguix user

What happened: 

“I curate content for big brands. On one occasion, I worked on a content post for a country’s national day. 

As always, I checked all the content I curated before and after I sent it to our graphic designer for content image preparation, and before I sent it to the client.

The batch of content was sent, including the national day greeting. The client approved it.

Weeks later, I saw notifications on the Facebook Page of the brand. To my shock, I mistakenly wrote the national day greeting a year before in the caption (50th anniversary instead of 49th!). The content image showed the right number (thank goodness), but the comments poured in, from “LOL too early” to “No regard to history. Probably the social media manager is not from here.”

Still feeling like a bucket of cold water splashed on me, I corrected the error in the caption. Then, I apologized in every single comment on the post. Good thing there were not a lot of comments, but it showed that there was some “concern” on the post prior to the changes.

I also informed my team leader and our CEO about it and apologized profusely.

The feeling like a bucket of cold water splashed on me? No emoji can represent that.

I now check my content twice as much as what I used to.”

How it turned out:

“I worked on a better way of checking my content. Even if I know that there’s lots of eyes reviewing what I do, I do my due diligence.”

Lessons learned:

“Just when you think you have reviewed your writing, review it again. And again. :)”

Clarence Thurman, Carpenter and Linguix user

What happened: 

“Once I was doing payroll. I was giving an explanation on why there were so many long lunches. I meant to type eating lunch while talking about job specifications, but instead, I typed eating Clint. Like an idiot, I hit send just as I realized what I had typed.”

How it turned out: 

“Luckily our pay lady has a good sense of humor. Not 5 seconds passed before I started calling our corporate office apologizing and trying to explain the mistake.” 

Lessons learned:

“Always read what you’re writing before sending anything.”

Harshita Katiyar, Content Writer and Linguix user

What happened: 

“I had great confusion one day when I was sick and had to take a day off. My colleague texted me, “Since you are sick today, what are you doing?” I replied, “Nothing dude, I’m just lying.” She was stunned that I was lying about my sickness to avoid coming to work. She did not clarify what she understood from my text about me. “But why are you lying?”, she asked me. I answered, “Because I wanted to, and I like lying.”Her shock returned, and she ceased to speak to me as she perceived me as a liar. After a few days, however, I understand why she isn’t communicating with me. I then explained to her that I was lying in bed, and that I like to lay around all day. Haha!

The fact that she stopped talking to me really made me feel embarrassed. And after knowing her reasoning, I understand that some words really need to be explained in detail.”

How it turned out:

“I would say that it does affect relationships. For these few words, I don’t want anyone to turn on me like she did because she stopped talking to me. The use of words such as lying-laying, ensure-assure, and compliment-complement does require deliberation when typing a text. While these words aren’t wrong per se, if misused, they can lead to regrettable decisions.”

Lessons learned:

“Every time I send a text to someone, I try to keep an eye on the words I am using and whether they need further explanation.”

It’s evident that inoffensive typos might become a real pain afterward. That’s why it’s crucial to check your pieces twice. To make the process faster and easier, you can use AI writing assistant Linguix to remove any errors instantly. Linguix not only highlights your grammatical, spelling and punctual errors but also analyzes your writing in context. Try Linguix for free here.

The post How Minor Writing Errors can Affect Career and Relationships: Stories from Linguix Users appeared first on Linguix Blog.

Today, we’ll cover ten common mistakes people make when sending connection requests.

Writing generic messages to everyone

For sure, sending out generic notes can save you lots of time, but will that be efficient? We doubt that. Instead, make sure that each message is personalized. However, there’s also no need to compose each one from scratch—you can use a few templates tailored to different audiences and/or goals and customize them to fit your prospect. By the way, Linguix’s shortcuts are ideal for this. 

Sending requests to random people

As you probably know, LinkedIn suggests new connections via the “People you may know” section. This, indeed, is one of the ways to extend your network. But should we sacrifice quality for the sake of quantity? Perhaps, you’d prefer to connect to someone who’s from your industry or is your target audience rather than send requests to random people.   

Not introducing yourself

Even though the person you’re connecting to has the chance to study your profile, it’d be polite to include short info about yourself. This can be your name, position, and the company you work for, or your area of interest. There’s absolutely no need to write a detailed bio (there’s not enough space for it anyway), but just one line stating who you are would be enough.

Not stating the reason why you write

It’s also worth mentioning how you came across the person’s profile and why you decided to connect. The reasons can vary: perhaps, you met them at a conference or some other event, you have common contacts, or you’re simply interested in connecting to industry professionals to extend your network. A good starting point would be to ask for some professional advice or recommendation since people are often ready to help. 

Not studying the person’s profile

One of the best ways to make a positive first impression is to show that you have spent some time reading the person’s profile and are aware of who you’re writing to. For example, if the person states they are currently working on a digitalization project, it could be a good idea to comment on this, especially if you have relevant experience or want to know more. It’s always beneficial to start a new relationship with a common interest.

Trying to sell straight away

Even if you add new people to your network with a single goal to sell them something, it’s probably not the best idea to do it at your first encounter. Unless a person is looking for what you offer at this very moment (which is highly unlikely), they will probably react to such an initiative with aversion and might not accept your invitation. After all, we are bombarded by ads all the time, and people will typically filter incoming information. 

Going into too much detail 

There’s a 300-character limit for an intro message, but there’s no need to use them all trying to impress the person with a detailed pitch. Better keep it short—around 200 words would be enough. People value their time, and, most likely, not everyone will read your note to the end if it’s too lengthy. So, keeping it concise will increase your chances.

Not asking questions 

If you’re interested in building a relationship rather than just adding another person to your network, it’d be helpful to initiate a conversation by asking a question or prompting the person to share some thoughts or ideas. This shouldn’t be too pushy, though—one simple question or suggestion would be enough.

Sending no follow-ups

If the person has accepted your invitation but hasn’t replied to you, this is not necessarily because they decided to ignore you. Perhaps, they haven’t read your message to the end or just haven’t had time to reply yet. In any way, if your goal is to establish a personal connection, don’t hesitate to send a follow-up message after some time passes. 

Making grammar mistakes

Last but not least, make sure your intro message is grammatically correct and there’re no punctuation errors—this can spoil the first impression, especially if the person you’re connecting to is linguistically sensitive. The easiest way to avoid such things is to use online assistants like Linguix which will highlight mistakes and suggest better options.

The post 10 Mistakes When Crafting a LinkedIn Intro Message appeared first on Linguix Blog.

Unfortunately, the grim statistics show that most high school students lack the proficiency in writing necessary to successfully complete a college-level English composition class. As a result, poor writing skills affect students’ performance and grades as well as lower chances to succeed in their future. 

Why do students struggle with writing? What are the ways to overcome this issue? How can AI writing assistants help? We’ll cover these questions in our new blog post. Let’s dive into it.

Students don’t read as much as before

Reading is an effective process for improving writing skills. While reading, students learn new words, expressions and the way they can be used. 

The digital era provides us with numerous opportunities, while simultaneously creating new challenges. 

Teenagers and young adults are no longer eager to perceive information through reading. Why would they, if there are so many YouTube videos that explain all they need in 10 minutes? 

Social media destroy our focus, so reading becomes particularly tedious. As a consequence, students don’t memorize new expressions and proper grammar usage, their vocabulary is limited.

The casual style of writing differs from the formal one

Essays and research papers require an academic writing style. While creative writing is enjoyable, the formal one is tiresome for most students. 

Essays, for example, should be written using accurate and subject-specific vocabulary, which students often don’t possess. Social media, short videos or some blog posts that teens usually digest are unlikely to contain this kind of vocabulary. Combine this with a lack of reading and you’ll see dozens of students who are afraid of writing.

People don’t speak using correct grammar

Even though most students in the US are natives, a lion’s share of them doesn’t speak correctly, let alone formally. Spoken language is full of incorrect grammar, unnecessary fillers, slang words and so on. Written assignments, in turn, should be concise, clear, accurate and formal. 

That’s why ELL students, for instance, can’t rely on speaking to improve their writing.

Students aren’t prepared to write academic papers

According to The New York Times article based on several studies, the root of the problem lies in teachers’ inability to teach students how to write. They often have little training in how to teach writing and, as a result, are unconfident writers themselves. 

The analysis of teacher preparation programs indicated that the teaching of writing wasn’t being covered in a widespread or systematic way. 

For these reasons, students lack writing practice and get little or no feedback.

Students are dysgraphic or dyslexic 

Students with these disorders commonly suffer from poor reading and writing skills. To keep up with the pace, they should be provided with special room accommodation. However, the symptoms of the disorders are often overlooked because neither educators nor their parents are aware of students’ condition. 

Without proper care, they will most probably perform worse and get lower marks.

How to Help Students who Struggle with Writing 

First, educational institutions should take into consideration the peculiarities of all students. Dyslexic, dysgraphic and ELL students have special needs that should be met. For example, additional writing and reading classes or class accommodation would be of great value. 

Second, teachers should take additional programs to learn how to teach writing. In fact, various initiatives are taken to address the issue. For example, as part of its program at Nassau Community College, a group of teachers was honing their own writing skills.

Finally, students themselves should take action to improve their writing. Practice makes perfect, as we all know. 

There are numerous techniques: freewriting, copying articles or essays, journaling and reading. In addition, it’s important to have someone who can give feedback on students’ writing.

How Linguix Assists Students 

Although we learn how to write in childhood, it still is one of the most challenging skills for many students. Yet the amount of papers, essays and emails they have to write to survive the university is notorious. Silly mistakes can easily affect grades and eventually their future. 

Nevertheless, students rarely can afford to buy tools for their studies. 

Therefore, our team has decided to provide all students with Linguix Premium for free! Use the tool to check if your grammar, punctuation and spelling are correct. Your personal Writing Coach helps you learn and avoid common mistakes you make. Rewriter 2.0, in turn, makes your vocabulary diverse and eliminates repetition.

If you’re a student and have an “.edu” email address, click the link, create an account and get your free Premium right away.

If your student email account doesn’t end with “. edu”, contact us at hi@linguix.com and we’ll help you out.

Focus on the value you provide in your writing assignments. Linguix helps you with the rest!

The post Why Students Struggle with Writing and Ways to Help Them appeared first on Linguix Blog.

So, let’s investigate how to combine adjectives in the English language like a pro!

Basic adjective order

In real life, we don’t often use more than 2-3 adjectives in a row. However, it’s still important to put them in the right order. And if you’re taking an examination, you can well be asked to place three or more adjectives in the correct order in a sample sentence. This is where you’ll need to recall the general adjective sequence, which goes as follows:

Examples:

• We saw beautiful gigantic ancient sequoias in the national park. (opinion, size, age)
• She gave me this weird red Japanese plastic device. (opinion, color, origin, material)
• Have you seen my favorite big dotted coffee cup? (opinion, size, color, purpose)

If two or more adjectives in a sentence happen to be from the same group, they are usually separated with a comma, the last one typically being connected with an “and”:

• There were lots of tiny blue, red and yellow flowers in the garden.
• This was the first glass and concrete building in our town.

Specific cases

In the examples above, all adjectives are positioned before the noun, but there are also cases when we use them after a linking verb (such as be, seem, become, feel, etc.):

• The house was old and derelict.

Or, we can put it another way:

• It was an old and derelict house.

Please note that certain adjectives are only used after a linking verb. These are called predicative adjectives. Often, they start with a prefix a-, with a few exceptions. Here are some examples:

• afraid
• alike
• alive
• awake
• ill
• well

Incorrect: We found an afraid little boy in the kitchen. 

Correct: We found a frightened little boy in the kitchen. 

Correct: The little boy we found in the kitchen was afraid.

Incorrect: I saw an ill old dog.

Correct: I saw a sick old dog.

Correct: The dog I saw was ill and old.

***

As you can see, mastering adjective order in English is not rocket science, although it might require some training to memorize the sequence. 

The post Mastering Adjective Order in English appeared first on Linguix Blog.

You’ll definitely encounter difficulties on your way to fluency in English, but it doesn’t mean you can’t learn it. Just look at millions of English learners who have overcome the same obstacles. So can you.

Let’s debunk the most common myths about learning English together, so you’ll realize that they shouldn’t stop you from achieving your goals.

Myth 1: Native Speakers Can Teach You Better

Have you noticed that most language learners prefer lessons with native English speakers? It’s common disbelief, however, that native speakers are better teachers. Why?

First of all, native speakers didn’t have the experience of learning the language as adults. Therefore, they may not be able to understand and empathize with most struggles non-natives adults face. 

Moreover, they can often use English grammar correctly without knowing why. It implies that they speak or write accurately but they can’t explain or teach it.

On the contrary, non-native teachers can be more helpful than a native speaker.

It doesn’t mean there are no excellent native teachers, but it’s important to pay attention to skills and qualifications your teacher possesses in the first place.

Myth 2: You Need to Live in an English-speaking Country to Learn the Language 

Many non-natives believe that after living in the US, for example, they’ll become fluent in English. Unfortunately, going to one of the English speaking countries isn’t equal to mastering the language. Without learning grammar first, for instance, you won’t be able to improve it. You’ll probably be able to use simple phrases while buying groceries or looking for a restaurant, but that’s far from fluency.

In the Internet era you don’t need to travel around the globe to learn the language. Instead, look for learning opportunities where you are. Create an environment in which your mind always has to use English. Change the language on your smartphone and laptop, watch movies and read books in English, find offline or online friends who are native English speakers and so on. 

Myth 3: To be Fluent You Have to Make no Mistakes

Some learners believe that they’ll become fluent only if they observe and correct all mistakes in their speech or writing. It doesn’t work this way as fluent English isn’t only about accuracy. 

It’s actually the other way around: focusing mainly on accuracy negatively impacts your fluency and ability to speak naturally and rapidly. Additionally, by constantly eliminating errors or being afraid of making them, you may avoid using complex sentences with sophisticated vocabulary and structure. Not surprisingly, this complexity also adds to your fluency level.

Therefore, try to balance accuracy and complexity and remember that accuracy isn’t everything. Mistakes are totally acceptable and even necessary.

Myth 4: You’re too Old to Learn English at a Sufficient Level

Let’s rely on the studies of respected universities. For example, MIT scientists proved that adults learn language to fluency nearly as well as children.

Instead of limiting yourself by believing that you’re too old to learn English, think of exact difficulties that make you procrastinate? What are you afraid of? Maybe you don’t like offline lessons or learning methods are too tough?

Find what really stops you and modify your learning practice, so that it’s enjoyable and easy. Test different methods with your teacher or by yourself.

Myth 5: Learning English is Boring

If you still believe that English is boring, the problem lies in the chosen learning method, not the language itself! 

To increase your motivation, change your learning strategies. Do something new, challenging and exciting. Find situations that force you to use your English skills.

Stop reading boring textbooks. Instead, 

• Listen to favorite podcasts; 
• Learn songs’ lyrics and sing them using correct pronunciation; 
• Follow bloggers whose English you like;
• Video chat with study buddies, who are also interested in learning English.

These are just a few examples of how to make your learning more colorful and engaging. Find what excites and challenges you, and believe us, you’ll love the process.

Myth 6: After Learning All Grammar Rules You’ll Become Fluent

It’s another limiting belief that delays your ability to sound fluent. Many learners believe that when they have learned enough English grammar, the fluency automatically comes into play.

Yes, you’ll eventually be able to use complex, sophisticated structure in your sentences with hard work, but you don’t have to wait until you’ve learned every grammar rule. Take small steps towards fluency everyday from now on. Learned rules should be practised, otherwise you’ll forget it later. Think about every grammar lesson you learn as something you will apply the next day. Cultivate habits that will enhance your fluency on a daily basis and you’ll see the results much sooner.

Myth 7: Once You’re Fluent, You’re Always Fluent

Most people learn the language, spending a lot of time and money, but end up forgetting everything they’ve learned. The reason is that without creating an environment contributing to lifelong learning, the chances to forget the language are too high. Bad news, you have to literally insert English in your life if you want to maintain fluency. 

Good news, however, is that you can learn to enjoy the process. Remember to apply methods that you like, experiment with video, audio and other ways of learning, dedicate some time every day and keep the language fresh.

Good luck in your English journey!

The post 7 Myths About the English Language appeared first on Linguix Blog.

I’d like to meet my colleagues, Kristen, and James.

You may ask whether the last comma in the example above is necessary. In this case, the Oxford comma clarifies to the reader that colleagues, Kristen, and James are separate entities. It implies that Kristen and James are not the writer’s colleagues. If they are, however, the Oxford comma should be removed:

I’d like to meet my colleagues, Kristen and James.

The Oxford comma is also called the serial (or series) comma and is used to clear up ambiguity like in the sentence above. However, it’s redundant in most lists:

Our pets love bananas, apples and watermelons.

As you can see, the Oxford comma in this example is unnecessary. Should we use it when it’s clearly superfluous? Let’s figure it out.

Do We Always Need the Oxford Comma?

To illustrate why the Oxford comma is important in some cases, let’s consider the following example:

We’re happy to see your friends, Taylor Swift and Jared Leto.

The obvious questions arise: are they seeing the friends and Taylor Swift and Jared Leto as separate entities? Or are Taylor Swift and Jared Leto the friends? It’s ambiguous and there is no clear answer unless the Oxford comma is present:

We’re happy to see your friends, Taylor Swift, and Jared Leto.

The Oxford comma here fully clarifies that they’re happy to see not only Taylor and Jared but also their friends.

However, as mentioned before the Oxford comma isn’t always necessary:

Yesterday I bought a dress, a skirt, and an amazing ring.

There is no ambiguity, so the Oxford comma is redundant. Nevertheless, supporters of the comma insist on its usage even if it’s unnecessary. In fact, it’s a matter of style. 

Use of the Oxford comma Comes Down to Style

Most publications have their own writing guidelines. There are two well-known style guides – the Associated Press Stylebook and the Chicago Manual of Style. The AP Stylebook doesn’t require the use of the Oxford comma. In turn, the Chicago Manual of Style uses it. These guides are created not to demonstrate the only way for grammatically correct writing, but to maintain consistency. 

In general, whether to use the Oxford comma or not is up to you if the ambiguity isn’t in place. 

Bottom Line

The use of the Oxford comma is grammatically correct and sometimes can be unnecessary. Therefore, it’s open to interpretation and there is no clear answer.

When it comes to academic writing, make sure you’ve chosen appropriate style guides. Otherwise, follow your gut and keep in mind that being consistent is what matters most.

The post What is the Oxford Comma and When You Need It appeared first on Linguix Blog.

But don’t worry, today we’ll share five uncommon and elegant ways to wish your colleagues, family members and friends Merry Xmas and Happy New Year.

Start with a gratitude

Even a simple “Thank you for everything” can make your greeting sound warmer. To make it even more personal, you can list three specific reasons why you’re grateful to this person. 

Depending on the type of relationship, this might be an acknowledgment of his or her professional skills, highlighting the importance of what they do, or cherishing their individual traits and the positive influence they exert on you.

Examples:

• I’d like to thank you for being a constant source of inspiration for other people and me.
• Thank you so much for what you do, your work is indispensable and truly valuable.   
• Just wanted to thank you for being so patient and kind to me, even when I don’t deserve it. I appreciate it a lot.

Use an inspiring quote

If you have a habit of putting down cool quotes, it’s high time you include one (or more) of them in your greeting. If you don’t, finding one on the internet is a matter of minutes. What can be more to the point than sharing wise and inspiring words of the greats? 

Examples:

• As Albert Einstein wrote, “A hundred times every day, I remind myself that my inner and outer life are based on the labors of other men, living and dead, and that I must exert myself in order to give in the same measure as I have received and am still receiving.”
• Margaret Thatcher once said, “Disciplining yourself to do what you know is right and important, although difficult, is the high road to pride, self-esteem, and personal satisfaction.”
• The Dalai Lama often says: “Happiness is not something readymade; it comes from your own actions.”

Mention something personal

Personified greetings always work the best. The recipient instantly feels they are valued and are not taken for granted. For example, if you know that the person you’re greeting is keen on traveling or plays in a band, you can wish them plenty of exciting trips or splendid gigs in the coming year.

However, it might not be easy to wish something personal to a colleague you barely know. In this case, you might just wish something less original and, if you feel like it, express hope to get to know each other better/work together on some project, etc.

Examples:

• May your YouTube channel strike 500,000 subscribers! 
• Wish you good luck with your forthcoming application, hope it works out well!
• May your coffee shop prosper and attract twice as many clients in the coming year!

Show off with a couple of exquisite words

Sometimes you just want to make your greeting stand out, and there’s nothing bad about it. A few vibrant words or phrases can spice up your season’s greetings and make it memorable. But try not to take it too far—otherwise, it might sound ridiculous. One or two would be sufficient.      

Examples:

• Wish you unforgettable and ethereal holidays!
• May your days be filled with eudaimonia and serendipity.
• May you enjoy many magical moments and elysian places in the coming year!

Wish something non-obvious

Apart from wishing common things like health, happiness and well-being, why not deviate from the script a little? If your recipient has a good sense of humor, they would certainly appreciate it. Still, it’s probably not the best idea to wish only weird things, but such an addition to a more conventional greeting might work well. 

Examples:

• May everyone around you be as sweet as a strawberry pie.
• May your next year be happy, prosperous and bring you to where you’ve never been before (in a good sense!).
• May you survive in the first place (all of us!).

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Now, you’re fully armed to make your Xmas and New Year greetings at least a bit more original and memorable! 

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