Confusing Words

Another of my favorites: hang or hung. Crazy!!

It’s just a constant typo thing for me: your/you’re. I know which is which, but I constantly mistype them. Aaargh!

Affect-effect-effect. Thank you for the help on those words. They always trip me up!

Thank you so much for this. Lay/lie difference particularly welcome! Re who/whom: whom should be used as little as possible and only vital in dative, genitive and ablative (yes we do have them in English!) ie after to, for, of, by, with, from, in, at, on. A common mistake now is to assume if it’s in the middle of the sentence it must be whom eg this is the man whom loves me. Ouch! Subordinate clause has its own subject. Not that I have new in my bonnet or anything….

My advice: Do NOT lie. I am advising you to tell the truth, even whilst lying down. ( <:

A much needed post and link — thank you! My two-cents worth:

elicit–to draw or bring out or forth.

illicit–disapproved of or not permitted for moral or ethical reasons.

In my own editing, and especially on my blog, I tend not to see it when I use hone for home or pour for pore or other homonym errors. When I do discover it, I feel so embarrassed–unwarranted shame, probably.

Wow, I didn’t know all of those. I do know when I am writing that there are times that I have to sit there and know what I want to say but not sure which version of the words to use to be correct.

Grammar Lesson

There are certain rules of grammar we often disobey.
Let’s consider some examples beginning with lie and lay

If I say, I’m going to lay down’, I’ve committed a minor faux pas
However I can say with impunity, “I’m going to lay down the law.”

One can say, “Yesterday I lay down,” because it refers to time gone by.
You can see how it confuses the issue to have lay as the past tense of lie.

If because of what I’ve writ above, confusion seems to reign,
I’ll refrain from a look at two other forms, namely, laid and lain

I and me and who and whom their own sets of problems pose;
Remarks on these I’ll keep quite brief, so you don’t begin to doze.

Purists insist it should be “It is I,” on both sides of the Atlantic,
I hope we agree a simple, “It’s me” sounds much less pedantic

“Whom are you talking too” is how we’re told to say it right,
But “Who are you talking to” sounds much less up-tight.

Grammar rules, no matter how hard we teach,
Are honored less in observance than in the breach

So, if you want those rules to be strict and firm,
To schools, you’d best add an extra term.

insure/ensure

In British English, the two are quite different – I will ensure that I insure the car, meaning I will make sure that I purchase a car insurance policy.

A lot of American authors use insure when I think the correct word is ensure. Is this me, or is this correct in American English?

Farther and further.

And if I may share the two I often see which make me cringe…

“A myriad OF ways…”

“Celibate until married…” (Yes, we all are.)

Great post!

My biggest pet peeves that haven’t already been mentioned are everyday/every day, and on to/onto and in to/into.

If you do something every day, it’s an everyday occurrence. Those are two distinct uses, and one of them requires “every” and “day” to be two separate words.

And sometimes it’s “on to” or “in to”, not “onto” and “into”. For example, a recent press release from my city’s police department expressed satisfaction that some local criminals had “turned themselves into police”. Using “into” instead of the correct “in to” here means that the bad guys had become law officers, not that they had turned themselves in (which is what had really happened). Oops!

That and which. It also bugs me when people use that when they’re talking about a person.

“She was a girl that talked too much.”

Grammar girl is a great source for these kinds of questions:

http://grammar.quickanddirtytips.com/

She details great ways of helping writers remember the rules.