B

BAD, BADLY

Bad is an adjective and badly is an adverb. Use the adjective bad when referring to human feeling.

Example: I felt bad. [If you said, “I felt badly,” you’d be saying that there was something wrong with your sense of touch.]

Badly is an adverb, but it is often mistakenly used as an adjective.

Incorrect: He wanted badly to go with them.

Correct: He wanted very much to go with them.

Incorrect: She felt badly after her operation.

Correct: She did not feel well after her operation.

BACK-CHANNELING

In conversation, back-channeling is a natural response that shows you understand what a person is saying by using interjections such as I see, yes, okay, and uh-huh.

BACKSLASH, SLASH

The usual slash (/) is sometimes called a forward slash ...

Get The AMA Handbook of Business Writing now with the O’Reilly learning platform.

O’Reilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.