Mignon Fogarty with Oprah Winfrey.

There are only two groups of people who don’t know about the Grammar Girl juggernaut: people who have been living under a rock for the last year, and people who don’t love the foibles of the English language. If you don’t use English in your every day life, if you think in JQUERY or SQL or Ruby some other non-English language, this blog post won’t interest you. You can stop reading now. (In fact, I’m wondering how you landed here at all.)

However, if you write or talk in English to share ideas with other people, whether you blog, tweet, engage on Facebook, video blog, or podcast, you need to know more about the wonders and surprises of our home-grown, immigrant-influenced, pop-culture addled English language. And Mignon Fogarty, AKA Grammar Girl, is the person who can best guide you along your journey.

Whether you prefer to listen or read, Mignon has you covered. Her podcast, Grammar Girl Quick and Dirty Tips for Better Writing, provides an ongoing education in the rules of English language finesse, along with a dose of humor, history, and lots of great examples. Her first book, Grammar Girl’s Quick and Dirty Tips for Better Writing, became a New York Times bestseller and landed her on Oprah.

Her latest book, The Grammar Devotional: Daily Tips for Successful Writing from Grammar Girl, is a sort of grammar fact-a-day calendar content organized into a book for easy use. It’s a brilliant tool for giving yourself a small dose of practical language trivia each day. Or, if you lack the patience for that (like me), you can randomly open the book to any page and just start reading. The book is smaller than most paperbacks, making it the perfect size to tuck into your bag for casual reading in spare minutes throughout your day. The index organizes the content found on its 234 pages and makes it useful as a reference book as well. However, if you are just looking for a grammar reference, I recommend you also pick up Mignon’s first book because it was designed for that use.

Attention Phoenix area readers: If you missed Mignon speaking at PodCampAZ last weekend, or if you can’t get enough of her, she’ll be back in town on November 20th to talk and sign books at Changing Hands Bookstore. Don’t miss her!

Here’s a video that introduces Mignon and her work as Grammar Girl to the world.

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Get certified as a Microsoft Office Specialist.

Did you know that there is a way to prove that you have outstanding skills with Microsoft Office products? Microsoft’s Office Specialist program conducts competency testing on the full range of Office products, and offers four levels of certification.

• Specialist certification. The first certification level, Microsoft Certified Application Specialist (MCAS), requires you to take a specialist exam in one or more Office products, including Microsoft Office Word 2007, Excel 2007, PowerPoint 2007, Access 2007, and Outlook 2007.
• Expert certification. The second certification level requires you to take an expert exam available for Word 2007 and Excel 2007.
• Master certification. The third certification level requires you to take the expert exams for Word 2007, Excel 2007, and PowerPoint 2007 and one additional expert exam of your choice.
• Specialist Master Instructor certification. The highest certification level requires you to complete the expert exams and provide proof of your teaching experience.

Preparation & Testing

Microsoft provides online resources to help you assess your current skills and prepare for the specialist and expert exams. They also have information about special offers for certificate preparation courses. You and also use their website to locate local testing centers where you take the tests.

Certificate

After passing the test, you receive a certificate and can add your certification level to your resume. Having this certification makes you stand out in a stack of resumes. If you are a relatively new writer, it can make the difference in the hiring process because it proves your ability to master this tool and your ability to go the extra mile to learn new skills in your field.

Certified Office Specialists may also be eligible for one semester of college credit through the American Council of Education (ACE) at the more than 1,500 cooperating colleges and universities.

So, what are you waiting for? Join the ranks of people who got better jobs because they became certified in Microsoft Office products.