We’ve had another record year here at the WriteAtHome Blog. The blog was visited 682,000 times in 2014. That’s pretty good considering we only had 22,000 visits in our first year!

In recent months, I’ve been posting to the blog less frequently. This wasn’t intentional — my time has been more consumed recently with Facebook posts that seem to generate lots more participation than the blog does. If you are interested in more interaction over issues of writing and grammar, please like the WriteAtHome Facebook page. But one of my new year commitments is to make a priority of blogging again. My goal is to average at least three posts a week.

What makes me happy is that even though I’ve posted less here, the blog has attracted more traffic than ever. I’m eager to see even more growth and participation in 2015.

Here are some of the blog highlights for the year:

• Our best month was October, when we had just under 80,000 visits.
• Our best day was January 23. We had 5,501 visits that day.
• We averaged 1,868 visits per day for the year.
• We passed 1 million total visits in June.

Now for our top ten blog posts for the year:

10. 50 Subordinating Conjunctions and Why They Matter

It’s amazing to me that a post with this title made the top ten! I guess there is more interest in grammar out there than I thought.

9. 100 Ways to Say Bad

Bad‘s not a bad word technically. But it’s not great either. This list gives young writers a whole bunch of alternatives. These “Ways to Say” posters are all now available for sale at Posters.WriteAtHome.com.

8. 5 Common Words that Don’t Rhyme

People love to comment that there really is a rhyme for orange and silver. But those words are so obscure I refuse to count them. Still, I’m amazed at the traffic I get to this page.

7. Writing Modes: The Four Purposes of Writing

I regret the subtitle. Modes and purposes are slightly different concepts. But this is quite a popular page anyway.

6. 100 Ways to Say Great!

This is one of my all-time favorite posts to create. It lends itself to encouragement — something all of us can use more of.

5. 250 Ways to Say Went

Go and went are bland verbs, and if any kind of word in your writing should be not-bland, it’s verbs. So, with a little help from a reader, I came up with 250 more vibrant alternatives to go and its past form, went. You should zip over and check it out.

4. 100 Words Every High School Freshman Should Know

I got this list from American Heritage Dictionary, but added links to definitions of the words. I even created an online quiz to test your knowledge of the words!

3. 100 Words Every Middle Schooler Should Know

People like these lists. Also from American Heritage, and also including an online quiz. The words are somewhat arbitrary, but they provide a decent test of basic vocabulary.

2. Dialogue Tags: 100 Ways to Say Said

I honestly feel guilty about this one. I think it’s frankly silly to tell students said is dead. There’s nothing wrong with said. In fact, I recommend using said 90% of the time in your dialogue — if you have to use a dialogue tag at all. Most of the word on this list I would never use in a story.

But I got started thinking of a list one day and before I knew it I had 100 options and shared it. I had no idea it would end up being my most popular Pinterest pin ever. Last I checked it had been shared hundreds of thousands of times. Yeesh. I’m sorry, folks. Unintended consequences.

1. Myth Buster: How Many Sentences Must a Paragraph Have?

I published this article several years ago, and it’s still, by far, my most visited page. This is thanks largely to its excellent placement in Google searches for the topic. By the way, if you are wondering, the answer is one.

I’d like to thank everyone who has stopped by to read my posts this past year. Thanks in particular to those of you who commented and shared what you’ve liked. And extra-special thanks to the thousands of you who have subscribed to get a weekly summary of my new content!

Here’s to another great year in 2015!

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