Personal means private or belonging to a particular person: personal belongings are your own things, personal data is information about you. It isn't a word for the people who work somewhere: they are the staff, or in formal texts personnel, spelled with a double n and stressed on the last syllable.
personal: will you get the meaning right?
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personal + information/details/belongings/life; for personal reasons; get personal; the hotel/office + staff (not personal)
- Never give your personal details to someone who calls you from an unknown number.
- She left the company for personal reasons and didn't want to talk about them.
- Please take all your personal belongings with you when you leave the train.
What changed
First versionThe hotel personal were very friendly and helpful.
RevisionThe hotel staff were very friendly and helpful.
The people who work at a hotel are the hotel staff. Personal is an adjective meaning “private, your own”, so the sentence sounds like “the hotel's private were very friendly”. In British English, staff is often followed by a plural verb: the staff were.
Personal can also mean “aimed at someone in a hurtful way”: a personal remark is a comment about someone's appearance or character, usually an unkind one. That's where get personal comes from, meaning to start criticising the person rather than their ideas: Let's talk about the plan and not get personal.
Your turn
The restaurant is closing early today because half of the ___ are off sick.
Show the answer
staff — The people who are off sick are the restaurant's employees, and they are the staff. Personal means “private, your own” and doesn't name people, so half of the personal isn't possible in English.
Write about the kind of personal information you don't share on social media. Use personal and explain why.
I never post personal details like my home address on social media, because I don't want strangers to know where I live.
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