ordinance/ordnance: Common Errors in English Usage Entry for Thursday, April 30, 2015

ordinance/ordnance 
A law is an ordinance, but a gun is a piece of ordnance.


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by/’bye/buy: Common Errors in English Usage Entry for Wednesday, April 29, 2015

by/’bye/buy
These are probably confused with each other more often through haste than through actual ignorance, but “by” is the common preposition in phrases like “you should know by now.” It can also serve a number of other functions, but the main point here is not to confuse “by” with the other two spellings: “’bye” is an abbreviated form of “goodbye” (preferably with an apostrophe before it to indicate the missing syllable), and “buy” is the verb meaning “purchase.” “Buy” can also be a noun, as in “that was a great buy.” The term for the position of a competitor who advances to the next level of a tournament without playing is a “bye.” All others are “by.”

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Shepard/shepherd: Common Errors in English Usage Entry for Tuesday, April 28, 2015

Shepard/shepherd
“Shepard” can be a family name, but the person who herds the sheep is a “shepherd.”

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revue/review: Common Errors in English Usage Entry for Monday, April 27, 2015

revue/review
You can attend a musical revue in a theatre, but when you write up your reactions for a newspaper, you’re writing a review.

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playwrite/playwright: Common Errors in English Usage Entry for Sunday, April 26, 2015

playwrite/playwright
It might seem as if a person who writes plays should be called a “playwrite” but in fact a playwright is a person who has wrought words into a dramatic form, just as a wheelwright has wrought wheels out of wood and iron. All the other words ending in “-wright” are archaic, or we’d be constantly reminded of the correct pattern.

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Happy birthday, William Shakespeare (1816).

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how come/why: Common Errors in English Usage Entry for Saturday, April 25, 2015

how come/why
“How come?” is a common question in casual speech, but in formal contexts use “why?”

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right of passage/rite of passage: Common Errors in English Usage Entry for Friday, April 24, 2015

right of passage/rite of passage
The more common phrase is “rite of passage”—a ritual one goes through to move on to the next stage of life. Learning how to work the combination on a locker is a rite of passage for many entering middle school students. A “right of passage” would be the right to travel through a certain territory, but you are unlikely to have any use for the phrase.

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bullion/bouillon: Common Errors in English Usage Entry for Thursday, April 23, 2015

bullion/bouillon
Gold bricks are bullion. Boil down meat stock to get bouillon. It’s an expensive mistake to confuse bouillon with bullion in a recipe.

 
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Earth/earth/Moon/moon: Common Errors in English Usage Entry for Wednesday, April 22, 2015

Earth/earth/Moon/moon
Soil is lower-case “earth.” And in most uses even the planet itself remains humbly in lower-case letters: “peace on earth.” But in astronomical contexts, the Earth comes into its own with a proud initial capital, and in science fiction it drops the introductory article and becomes “Earth,” just like Mars and Venus. A similar pattern applies to Earth’s satellite: “shine on, harvest moon,” but “from the Earth to the Moon.” Because other planets also have moons, it never loses its article.


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Happy Earth Day!

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par excellance/par excellence: Common Errors in English Usage Entry for Tuesday, April 21, 2015

par excellance/par excellence
Photoshop is the picture-editing software par excellence. We often italicize this phrase—meaning roughly “finest or most characteristic of its type,” “exemplary”—to indicate it is French. The French pronounce the final syllable “-ahnss” (with a nasalized N which is hard for English-speakers to master), but that is no justification for misspelling the word as “excellance.” Although they pronounce it differently, they spell “excellence” the same way we do.



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Happy birthday, Charlotte Bronte (1816).

And speaking of French and English, Paul Brians' latest blog post discusses Franglais (or is it Engrench?).

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pompom/pompon: Common Errors in English Usage Entry for Monday, April 20, 2015

pompom/pompon 
To most people that fuzzy ball on the top of a knit hat and the implement wielded by a cheerleader are both “pompoms,” but to traditionalists they are “pompons,” spelled the way the French—who gave us the word—spell it. A pompom, say these purists, is only a sort of large gun. Though you’re unlikely to bother many people by falling into the common confusion, you can show off your education by observing the distinction.



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staid/stayed: Common Errors in English Usage Entry for Sunday, April 19, 2015

staid/stayed
“Staid” is an adjective often used to label somebody who is rather stodgy and dull, a stick-in-the-mud. But in modern English the past tense of the verb “stay” is “stayed”: “I stayed at the office late hoping to impress my boss.”





 

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addicting/addictive: Common Errors in English Usage Entry for Saturday, April 18, 2015

addicting/addictive
Do you find beer nuts addicting or addictive? “Addicting” is a perfectly legitimate word, but much less common than “addictive,” and some people will scowl at you if you use it.



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still in all/still and all: Common Errors in English Usage Entry for Friday, April 17, 2015

still in all/still and all
The phrase “still and all” means something like “all things considered.” Now (“still”), after having taken all relevant facts into account. . . . So it’s not “still in all” but “still and all.”

 
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drownding/drowning: Common Errors in English Usage Entry for Thursday, April 16, 2015

drownding/drowning
Before you are drowned, you are “drowning,” without the extra D. Later, you have not “drownded.” You’ve “drowned.”



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hangar/hanger: Common Errors in English Usage Entry for Wednesday, April 15, 2015

hangar/hanger
You park your plane in a hangar but hang up your slacks on a hanger.




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untracked/on track: Common Errors in English Usage Entry for Tuesday, April 14, 2015

untracked/on track
When things begin running smoothly and successfully, they get “on track.” Some people oddly substitute “untracked” for this expression, perhaps thinking that to be “tracked” is to be stuck in a rut.


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shear/sheer: Common Errors in English Usage Entry for Monday, April 13, 2015

shear/sheer
You can cut through cloth with a pair of shears, but if the cloth is translucent it’s sheer. People who write about a “shear blouse” do so out of sheer ignorance.

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jam/jamb: Common Errors in English Usage Entry for Sunday, April 12, 2015

jam/jamb
The only common use for the word “jamb” is to label the vertical part of the frame of a door or window. It comes from the French word for “leg”; think of the two side pieces of the frame as legs on either side of the opening. For all other uses, it’s “jam”: stuck in a jam, traffic jam, logjam, jam session, etc.


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renumeration/remuneration: Common Errors in English Usage Entry for Saturday, April 11, 2015

renumeration/remuneration
Although “remuneration” looks as if it might mean “repayment” it usually means simply “payment.” In speech it is often confused with “renumeration,” which would mean re-counting (counting again).


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recognize: Common Errors in English Usage Entry for Friday, April 10, 2015

recognize
In sloppy speech, this often comes out “reck-uh-nize.” Sound the G.


 
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whose-ever/whoever’s: Common Errors in English Usage Entry for Thursday, April 9, 2015

whose-ever/whoever’s
In speech people sometimes try to treat the word “whoever” as two words when it’s used in the possessive form: “Whose-ever delicious plums those were in the refrigerator, I ate them.” Occasionally it’s even misspelled as “whoseever.” The standard form is “whoever’s,” as in “Whoever’s plums those were. . . .”

 
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heighth/height: Common Errors in English Usage Entry for Wednesday, April 8, 2015

heighth/height
“Width” has a TH at the end, so why doesn’t “height”? In fact it used to, but the standard pronunciation today ends in a plain T sound. People who use the obsolete form misspell it as well, so pronunciation is no guide. By the way, this is one of those pesky exceptions to the rule, “I before E except after C,” but the vowels are seldom switched, perhaps because we see it printed on so many forms along with “age” and “weight.”

 

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redundancies: Common Errors in English Usage Entry for Tuesday, April 7, 2015

redundancies
There are many examples of redundancies in these pages: phrases which say twice what needs to be said only once, like “past history.” Advertisers are particularly liable to redundancy in hyping their offers: “as an added bonus” (as a bonus), “preplan” (plan), and “free gift” (but look out for the shipping charges!). Two other common redundancies that are clearly errors are “and plus” (plus) and “end result” (result). But some other redundancies are contained in phrases sanctioned by tradition: “safe haven,” “hot water heater,” “new beginning,” and “tuna fish.”


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error/err: Common Errors in English Usage Entry for Monday, April 6, 2015

error/err
When you commit an error you err. The expression is “to err is human.”


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can goods/canned goods: Common Errors in English Usage Entry for Sunday, April 5, 2015

can goods/canned goods
Is there a sign at your grocery store that says “can goods”? It should say “canned goods.”

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wander/wonder: Common Errors in English Usage Entry for Saturday, April 4, 2015

wander/wonder
If you idly travel around, you wander. If you realize you’re lost, you wonder where you are.

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crucifix/cross: Common Errors in English Usage Entry for Friday, April 3, 2015

crucifix/cross
A crucifix is a cross with an image of the crucified Christ affixed to it. Reporters often mistakenly refer to someone wearing a “crucifix” when the object involved is an empty cross. Crucifixes are most often associated with Catholics, empty crosses with Protestants.

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dialate/dilate: Common Errors in English Usage Entry for Thursday, April 2, 2015

dialate/dilate 
The influence of “dial” causes many people to mispronounce and misspell “dilate” by adding an extra syllable.

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suffer with/suffer from: Common Errors in English Usage Entry for Wednesday, April 1, 2015

suffer with/suffer from
Although technical medical usage sometimes differs, in normal speech we say that a person suffers from a disease rather than suffering with it.


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