Here are some errors in spelling or grammar that my friend Dean and I see often. Thanks to many others for their input on this also!
| We see... | It should be... |
|---|---|
| appologize | apologize |
| artical | article |
| bagle | bagel |
| baited breath | bated breath (see m-w.com about that.) |
| cacheing | caching |
| Carl Castle, Karl Kassell, etc. | Carl Kasell, and here's his NPR page |
| cash (to mean computer memory, storage/hiding space, or something stored/concealed in such a space) | cache |
| could care less | couldn't care less (see m-w.com.) |
| definately | definitely |
| devine | divine |
| diety | deity |
| dissappear or dissapear | disappear |
| DYI | DIY (meaning Do It Yourself) |
| ect | etc. (It stands for 'et cetera'.) |
| for all intensive purposes | for all intents and purposes |
| freind | friend |
| hastle | hassle |
| here, here! | hear, hear! See The Straight Dope. |
| in lou of | in lieu of (lieu is the French word for "place") |
| irregardless | regardless or irrespective |
| Isreal | Israel |
| maintainance | maintenance |
| mneumonic | mnemonic |
| molesterer | molester, as in child molester |
| mute point | moot point (moot meaning insignificant or purely academic) |
| old fashion | old-fashioned |
| per say | per se |
| probabally | probably |
| pronounciation | pronunciation |
| que | queue, or maybe cue |
| raising cane | raising Cain (see wordwizard.com's explanation) |
| Scotch (to describe someone from Scotland) | Scottish, or one of the Scots (see m-w.com) |
| seperate | separate |
| should of | should've or should have |
| Sweedish | Swedish |
| throught | throughout ("through" + "out") |
| wa la, wah lah, or viola | voila (it's French.) Though sometimes this seems to be intentional, done in a tongue-in-cheek manner. |
| web sight | web site |
| wierd, or werid | weird |
Some people have alternate spellings of common names, but here are the usual spellings:
| We see... | But most people spell it this way... |
|---|---|
| Jonathon | Jonathan |
| Micheal | Michael |
| Racheal | Rachael |
Some abbreviations get an excess word tacked on at the end:
| We see... | What's excess... |
|---|---|
| ATM machine | The M stands for machine |
| CD disc or DVD disc | The D in both stands for disc |
| DSL line | The L stands for line |
| LCD display | The D stands for display |
| PIN number | The N stands for number |
| RAM memory | The M stands for memory |
Here are some confused words:
| Confused words... | For example...UGH! The WRONG WAY: | What's the difference? |
|---|---|---|
| "accept" and "except" | "Everyone accept me went to the store." or "I can't except your explanation." | (link tbd) |
| "ad" and "add" | "You're sight on anglefire has to many adds" (find the errors!) | "ad" is short for "advertisement"; "add" is a verb meaning to join or combine. |
| "adieu" and "ado" | "With no further adieu" or "I bid you ado" | From m-w.com: adieu meaning farewell; ado meaning time-wasting bother over trivial details [as in] "wrote the paper without further ado" |
| "affect" and "effect" | "The change had no affect" or "How will that effect me?" | See the m-w.com page |
| "angel" and "angle" | "angles in heaven," "angle food cake," "a square has four right angels" | I think you can guess from the errors which word is which. |
| "brake" and "break" | "Take a coffee brake" or "I stepped on the break." | oh... look it up. |
| "cloths" and "clothes" | "I don't have clean cloths to wear." or "We used two clothes to wipe the table." | "Cloths" (which rhymes with "moths") is the plural of cloth. "Clothes" are the garments you wear. |
| "discover" and "invent" | "Thomas Edison discovered the electric lamp." or "Cave men invented fire." | "discover" is for things that existed already that someone found. "invent" is for things that didn't exist that someone created. |
| "discreet" and "discrete" | "I hope you will be discrete." or "There were three discreet events." | "discreet" means "showing good judgement" or "unpretentious," and "discrete" means "distinct" |
| "e.g." and "i.e." | Best to send you to the m-w.com page on this... | In short, "e.g." means "for example," and "i.e." can be used in place of "that is" (as in: "My favorite kind of pie, i.e., blueberry." |
| "formally" and "formerly" | Maybe only folks who drop their R's make this mistake? | Maybe when you see both words together, the difference is clear? |
| "here" and "hear" | "I can't here you" or "I didn't see you hear." | "here" for place, "hear" for audio |
| "its" and "it's" | "Its cold out" or "The dog wags it's tail." | If you can't substitute "it is" then don't use "it's." In the above (wrong) example, "The dog wags it is tail" doesn't make sense! |
| "lie," "lay," "laid," and "lain" | Uh... just go look at the m-w.com page. | See m-w.com |
| "loose" and "lose" | "I hope we don't loose the game." or "I have a lose tooth." | "loose" rhymes with "caboose," "lose" rhymes with "booze" |
| "peak" and "pique" | "Your page peaked my interest." It should be "piqued" here. | m-w.com says pique can mean "to excite or arouse by a provocation, challenge, or rebuff," as it does here. |
| "pre-madonna" and "prima donna" | "She's a real pre-madonna." | Not unless you're trying to indicate that she was before pop artist Madonna or perhaps the Virgin Mary. If you mean a principal female opera/concert singer or a sensitive, vain or undisciplined person, say "prima donna." |
| "principal" and "principle" | "That's against my principals" or "Go see the principle." | (principal vs principle link) |
| "right," "rite," "wright," and "write" | "playwrite," "copywrite," "rights of passage," etc. | oof |
| "suit," "suite," and "sweet" | "swim suite," "hotel sweet" | "suit" for clothes, e.g. "business suit." "suit" for legal matters, as in "he filed a suit." "suite" (pronounced like "sweet") for music and hotel rooms and such. "sweet" for sugar. |
| "summary" and "summery" | "I'm short on time, can you give me a summery?" | A "summary" is a short version covering the main points. "Summery" is, I guess, an adjective describing weather that one might find in the summer. |
| "their," "there," and "they're" | Too many to name. | Too lazy too explain. Look it up. |
| "throw" and "through" | "I will through it out." | yuck |
| "to" and "too" | "Is she going to?" | "too" means also. |
| "your" and "you're" | "Your my friend," or "I like you're sweater." | As english-zone.com says: "Your is used to show possession: Your book is black, my book is red. You're is used as the contraction for you are: I hope you're not confused!" |
And here are some other errors folks make:
| Other wackitude... | For example...UGH! |
|---|---|
| "decimated," when meaning "destroyed" | m-w.com says:
|
| "literally," when describing something figuratively | In sports, to describe a good performance: "He was literally on fire." Was he? Did they come out with fire extinguishers? |
| "I" when "me" really is correct. | "He told Sue and I to go." If you can say "He told me..." then you can say "He told Sue and me..." This is probably the result of hypercorrection. |
| Plurals and possessives. | One generally does not make something plural by adding an "apostrophe s" to it. For example, "I like your shoe's." That's wrong. One could say "I like your shoes," or one might say "My shoe's heel just fell off." (The heel belonging to the shoe...) Even more frustrating seems to be the use of the "s apostrophe" when making a plural possessive: such as "My shoes' heels have both fallen off." (correct) Check out m-w.com's page on the apostrophe. |
I don't claim to be perfect! See something wrong here? Contact leaf. For example, I know that my use of commas is inconsistent on this page. I seem to remember that they should go inside quotation marks when quotation marks are present, but there are times when that just seems to muddle the meaning of the sentence. So I've been inconsistent, I'm sure.
What about "like" vs. "as"? See m-w.com for a discussion of that. They also have a nice section on "among" vs. "between", hyphens vs. dashes, "bring" vs. "take", "that" vs. "who" vs. "which", "may" vs. "can", and "a" vs. "an" in front of words beginning with h.
I had "hopefully" here as a pet peeve, and I said:
"Hopefully the car won't die." Is the car full of hope? No, it is the speaker, if anyone, who is experiencing hope. It is better to say "I hope the car won't die." This is so common though that I suspect it will someday be considered standard.
Well, guess what... it is standard, and I was wrong. Here's some info from your favorite source and mine, Merriam Webster:
In the early 1960s the second sense of hopefully ["it is hoped,"], which had been in sporadic use since around 1932, underwent a surge of popular use. A surge of popular criticism followed in reaction, but the criticism took no account of the grammar of adverbs. Hopefully in its second sense is a member of a class of adverbs known as disjuncts. Disjuncts serve as a means by which the author or speaker can comment directly to the reader or hearer usually on the content of the sentence to which they are attached. Many other adverbs (as interestingly, frankly, clearly, luckily, unfortunately) are similarly used; most are so ordinary as to excite no comment or interest whatsoever. The second sense of hopefully is entirely standard.
Thanks, Tom, for the pointer.
Acronyms: Someone named Ted wrote: "People use acronym too often when describing abbreviations." I agree. Ted kindly provided the following list of examples, and a definition:
acronym (noun) 1. a WORD formed from the initial letters of a multi-word name. If you pronounce the abbreviation as a word then it's an acronym.
Thanks, Ted!
Stuff we don't hear:
I also found this amusing list of grammar rules on the web.
Back to: Word index
This page last revised
Mon Jan 19 19:58:15 EST 2004
by leaf