Words that people commonly use incorrectly ...

[vivalour]

I teach for an online college and I see many. Mind you these are adults looking to improve their situations, but they should have learned these in elementary school.

Effect and Affect
Their and There
Way and Weigh
Plain and Plane

How about fair and fare???

 

[vivalour]

Muslin vs Muslum

As a child, from a family of seamtresses (which sound MUCH better than from a family of sewers!), I used to make this mistake all the time. It took me years to really understand the joke when my mother always replied "Yes, but what about the Catholics?" Zoom! Right over my head.

To this day, I still watch myself when I say "muslin".

Could you mean muslin (fabric) and Muslim (believer in Islam)? I guess I was reading while you were sewing.

 

[Hoc]

Most of the above. Also, the confusing of "compose" and "comprise," including the phrase "is comprised of. . . "

Yecch!

"Notwithstanding" placed in the wrong place in a sentence.

"Nauseated" when the word is "nauseous."

What the heck is the word "Vetted"? That's just made up!

All of these are things up with which I will not put!!!

 

[vivalour]

"it's" for "its" and the spontaneous insertion of an apostrophe into almost any word that ends in "s"
Thanks for the opportunity to vent. I should be safe for another year or so!

About the apostrophe: IMO it's evolved into decoration rather than punctuation. Few people know when to use it, and even fewer care....

 

[Stressy]

"Irregardless" drives me nuts. No such word--it's "regardless".

Also, when people say "anxious" to mean "excited". For example, "we're anxious to see you!" Anxious actually means you're a little nervous and unsettled/stressed about something, but most people use it to mean they're excited about something and can't wait for whatever it is to happen.

David

Oh Boy, this is mine. My 15 yr old son recorded himself saying this exact word and it blares every time I start up my computer. He thinks he is funny

 

[Stressy]

This thread begs for this book endorsement:

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/1592400876

Funny, funny, funny.

 

[DeniseM]

Most spelling errors, and word usage errors, are not intentional, so they don't bug me so much. What I really hate is reading posts with no punctuation, no capitalization and no paragraphs. I find them very hard to read and understand.

 

[DeniseM]

and in the timeshare world - closing company vs. title company

Guilty as charged - please define.

 

[Hoc]

Guilty as charged - please define.

A closing company is generally a company that creates something akin to an escrow, verifies the ownership and the payment, prepares the transfer documents and gets the transfer done.

A title company is an insurance company that issues a policy against a defect of record in title.

 

[Keitht]

"Off of" the price instead of "Off" the price.
"For free" instead of "Free".

 

[John Cummings]

I have seen so many people use "boarder" instead of border when referring to the US border between Mexico or Canada.

 

[AwayWeGo]

Follett & Barzun & Wensberg.

Alan,

Is that the Modern American Usagage copy that was revised by Erik Wensberg?


Richard

P.S. Thanks for the update on Wilson Follett.

Yes. The Amazon-Dot-Com link is to the Wensberg version, which I might just have to spring for if I can't find my copy of the old Barzun edition. (It might be in a carton down in the basement with a bunch of stuff I brought home from the office when I retired in 1998. One of these days maybe I'll go see. Otherswise, my heirs & assigns will have to deal with it some day after I assume room temperature.)

-- Alan Cole, McLean (Fairfax County), Virginia, USA.​

 

[KristinB]

These are some great examples! Here's one that hasn't been mentioned yet... Ex cetera instead of et cetera (pronunciation only, I don't think I've ever seen anyone misspell this in writing ).

 

[johnmfaeth]

Thanks Hoc!!!

 

[KristinB]

Oh, I forgot one that we see a lot on the boards here and other TS related sites -- resell instead of resale!

 

[stonebroke]

Unique

any word in front of "unique" such as "very" or "extremely" Unique means one of a kind. So it can't be more of something than it already is.

 

[MULTIZ321]

If your forte is Tug - just how do you pronounce forte?

forte1(fôr'tā', fôrt, fōrt)

n.
Something in which a person excels.
The strong part of a sword blade, between the middle and the hilt.
[French fort, from Old French, strong, from Latin fortis. See fort.]

SYNONYMS forte, métier, specialty, thing. These nouns denote something at which a person is particularly skilled: Writing fiction is her forte. The theater is his métier. The professor's specialty was the study of ancient languages. Mountain climbing is really my thing.

USAGE NOTE The word forte, coming from French fort, should properly be pronounced with one syllable, like the English word fort. Common usage, however, prefers the two-syllable pronunciation, (fôr'tā'), which has been influenced possibly by the music term forte borrowed from Italian. In a recent survey a strong majority of the Usage Panel, 74 percent, preferred the two-syllable pronunciation. The result is a delicate situation; speakers who are aware of the origin of the word may wish to continue to pronounce it as one syllable but at an increasing risk of puzzling their listeners.


Richard

 

[rickandcindy23]

I have a degree in English, so I notice many, many blunders in both spelling and grammar here, but no big deal. There was a discussion a while back about Hawaii, which I am sure Denise remembers. You are in Hawaii, but you are on the island of _________. Some people say "on Hawaii," which may be that you are on the Big Island, or you are somewhere on Hawaii, but we have no idea where. I picture you as lost on Hawaii, rather like that crew on Oahu.

The English professors all repeatedly told us not to start examining others' grammar, and I took that very seriously. Our daughter's mother-in-law doesn't have a degree in English, but she is always correcting everyone, which I find quite comical. We also have another "friend" who is constantly correcting my best friend's grammar. I want to shove a sock in his mouth. :hysterical:

 

["Roger"]

With most of the mistakes, even though they are mistakes, I can understand how people got it wrong. (More often than not, they write down what they hear.)

About ten years ago, however, I begin to see a sizable number of (a lot of) younger people make "alot" into a single word in typed presentations. At first, I just thought that this was just a common typo, but then I begin to see this word(?) appear with such increasing frequency that I realized that many younger people thought that this combined word was correct. In any case,...

I am having fun reading this thread. There have been alot of good posts.

(Makes me feel young.)

 

[Cathy in Boston]

Also, when people say "anxious" to mean "excited". For example, "we're anxious to see you!" Anxious actually means you're a little nervous and unsettled/stressed about something, but most people use it to mean they're excited about something and can't wait for whatever it is to happen.

David

On the other hand, if you are facing a family visit, you might be using the word "anxious" intentionally....

 

[Jimster]

Hmm

"orientated" instead of oriented
"exact same" instead of exact or same
of instead have- ie. I would of done that
lead instead of led ie I lead him to the store

As a former teacher, I have a list (including many of those previously mentioned) as long as my arm.

One of my favorites was someone who kept saying: "He didn't want to taken for granite" I assured him he didn't look at all like stone.

 

[AwayWeGo]

English Degree, Shminglish Degree.

I have a degree in English,

Me too, not that it makes us anything special -- except that if we ever meet face to face we can do the Secret English Major Handshake.

My awareness of flubs -- other people's & my own -- is about the same as the engineers' & the dentists' flub-awareness. Ditto the flubs that I commit on my own. Forgive us our flubs as we forgive those who flub against us.

My U.Va. English diploma -- plus 51 cents (tax included) -- is good for a cup of sr. citz. coffee at McDonalds -- even though my degree was conferred way back before the days of grade inflation. Shux, I was lucky to graduate in only 4 years + 2 summer sessions. (I majored in semicolons.)

The main thing I caught on to once I left school & joined the typewriter-powered workforce is that good writing involves much more than not making any mistakes. I was flabbergasted the 1st time I got a manuscript to mark up that simply would not edit. There were few mistakes in it, but there was nothing right about it. It made no sense. It was impossible to follow. It was boring. And it could not be edited into shape. I would have been better off starting with a fresh, clean pack of new blank stationery to run through my typewriter than with the so-called finished product I was working on that was handed in by another person (a professional writer). Sheesh.

What ability I have, such as it is, to get ideas across in writing comes mainly from doing lots of it for critical audiences. Practice might not necessarily make perfect, but it does provide plenty of opportunity to get the hang of it. Private journaling, TUG-BBSing, etc., are OK except that those kinds of writing lack any editorial review process other than whatever revising & rewriting I do on my own. And, shux, everybody needs an editor.

Here's a reality check for good writing. When you read something you really like, isn't the writing for writing's sake pretty much invisible? That is, you never say, "My, aren't those relative clauses elegant?" You don't think to yourself, "Wow! What nice subject-verb agreement." Etc.

When you experience a chunk of prose as "good writing," you're more apt to laugh at its humor, to feel moved by its emotionally evocative qualities, to get goosebumps from the scary stuff, & get drawn into a good story, because the writer does such a good job that as reader you simply get it. You laugh at what's funny. You enjoy a riveting tale. You become better informed about a subject you're interested in. You get interested for the 1st time in something new. You agree or disagree with a sharp argument.

Good writing is good because it works, not because it gets you to whip out your Strunk & White for keeping score.

The writer's obligation is not just to write so that it is possible for the reader to understand. The writer's obligation is to write so that is is impossible for the reader to misunderstand.

-- Alan Cole, McLean (Fairfax County), Virginia, USA.​

 

[sstamm]

The Chief Of Staff hates it when I talk back to the TV set, as I sometimes do when 1 of the bigtime high-paid professional talkers utters some piece of verbal boneheadedness that even I can spot as an out & out flub. I can't help it if I'm getting cranky with advancing age -- it's not without cause. So it goes.

-- Alan Cole, McLean (Fairfax County), Virginia, USA.​

My children can't stand when I talk back to the TV. The latest example that drives me up the wall is a commercial. I think it is for Lockheed Martin, but can't remember for sure. It states proudly,
"We never forget who we're working for."

Every time I shout at the TV, "We never forget for whom we are working," my kids go crazy and tell me it does not sound right. I have to change the channel when it airs.

 

[Keitht]

I have a degree in English,

Do you really mean a degree in English, or a degree in American? Cuz they ain't the same as far as we're concerned.

 

[T_R_Oglodyte]

Do you really mean a degree in English, or a degree in American? Cuz they ain't the same as far as we're concerned.

Two countries separated by a common language.