# 20 misused English words that make smart people look silly



## lvcabbie (Nov 20, 2015)

Affect vs Effect  
Lie vs lay
Ironic vs coincidental
Nauseous vs. Nauseated
Comprise vs compose


Do YOU know the difference? Check out all of them @ http://qz.com/432285/20-misused-words-that-make-smart-people-look-dumb/


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## J Anfinson (Nov 20, 2015)

Always be sure you know what a word means before using it. After all, you don't want to look like an iridescent doppelganger.


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## Bishop (Nov 20, 2015)

Your right, those are commonly confused words!


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## Bloggsworth (Nov 21, 2015)

When do we get the next 10?


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## Mike C (Nov 21, 2015)

I don't think I've ever heard anyone confuse any of these words. Maybe its an American thing?


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## Phil Istine (Nov 21, 2015)

Bloggsworth said:


> When do we get the next 10?



There were ten comparisons, composing or comprising of twenty words 

(oooh, how I love being a smartarse)


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## Sam (Nov 21, 2015)

No, they make silly people look sillier. 

Smart people generally know the difference, otherwise they shouldn't be called 'smart'.


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## JustRob (Nov 21, 2015)

I always state whether a word is "part of my vocabulary" meaning that I know how to use it as opposed to simply knowing that it exists. I learn the correct way to use a word before adding it to my vocabulary. To gain knowledge one must first admit to ignorance.

Once at the office many years ago someone said to me "Rob, you prevaricate," to which I replied "No I don't. What does that mean?" Maybe on that occasion I didn't quite get the use and admission of ignorance in the right order.

Not long ago in these forums I had to point out to someone the different meanings of "affect" and "effect" as verbs. The pitfalls cited here are all standard ones that we learn to avoid. 

While Americans may have ironed out many of the traditional creases in British, or to be more precise and maybe less (!) kind "non-US", English perhaps they still stumble over the ones that are left because there are fewer (!) in their version. I don't have to think twice about using the verb "license" and noun "licence" correctly for example because there are so many quirks like that in our version of the language.

 English is _our_ native language and we preserve it by learning how to use it, at least many of us still do. That's not about being old-fashioned but being precise. If I wanted to be old-fashioned I might write "nice" instead of "precise", the old meaning of the word "nice". That is why when a craftsman talks about something being "nice and true" he is using the word in its old sense. That's what I mean about a word being in one's vocabulary.


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## Kevin (Nov 21, 2015)

Nice...


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## Jeko (Nov 21, 2015)

Next I need to see '20 buzzword titles that make good posts look bad'.

As Sam said, smart people know the difference.

A more interesting quandry for smart people, one that makes them think each other silly, is the grammatical issue of whether it should be '10 items or _less_' or '10 items or _fewer_'.


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## Bloggsworth (Nov 21, 2015)

Fewer dear Cadence, fewer...


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## Bloggsworth (Nov 21, 2015)

Stationary - Stationery.


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## lvcabbie (Nov 21, 2015)

Bishop said:


> *Your* right, those are commonly confused words!


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## Hairball (Nov 21, 2015)

J Anfinson said:


> Always be sure you know what a word means before using it. After all, you don't want to look like an iridescent doppelganger.



A _*who*_??


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## Jeko (Nov 21, 2015)

> Fewer dear Cadence, fewer...



Only according to prescriptive grammar, which is going out of fashion in both public and academic arenas (whether you view it as a good thing or not).

'Less' can be used in this case in the same way 'less than £10' can be used - 'items' in a supermarket can be perceived as a measure of what you have in your trolley (like 'pounds' has become a measure rather than individual pounds as being counting nouns) and thus has been naturally appropriated by many as a mass noun. This however belongs to a more informal register. Hence shops like Tesco and Asda in the UK will use 'less' but Waitrose will keep to 'fewer' so as not to offend the higher age demographic they target who have stuck to the prescriptive grammar they were taught and have not partaken in the adaptation of grammar that is in progress.


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## Bishop (Nov 21, 2015)

Thank you, lvcabie... that was the joke.


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## bazz cargo (Nov 21, 2015)

Throw a rock round here and you can hit several pedants. Ricochet is a killer. 

I love playing with words. I also make a lot of mistakes. So I'm dumb. Oh well.


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## JustRob (Nov 21, 2015)

Cadence said:


> Only according to prescriptive grammar, which is going out of fashion in both public and academic arenas (whether you view it as a good thing or not).



I get the feeling that telling anyone that they are wrong about anything is going out of fashion. In fact education may well be going out of fashion. If I use "prescriptive grammar" then some people may think that I am old-fashioned but if I don't then others will think that I am wrong. At my age there is nothing wrong with being old-fashioned, so that would be my preference. "Prescriptive grammar" is capable of conveying information accurately and that is all that language is required to do. If newer generations want a language with fewer rules to make their lives simpler then I have no objections but I am content to continue applying the ones that I've already learned. It is my language in my time just as much as a local dialect is specific to a location. 

To abandon the distinction between less and fewer is akin to dropping regional words for the sake of homogeneity. If space-time is now considered to be a four-dimensional environment then we should not constrain ourselves to permitting linguistic variation imported across three of those dimensions but excluding any imported across the fourth. I live in a time that spans the greater part of a century. Most of us do nowadays. To live only in a day or a week or a month or a year of that is to diminish what we are. I am still as much a young man living in the 1960's as I ever was, literally a time traveller, and my language travels with me.

I recollect a conversation many years ago in which a group of us were discussing who knew what a byre was. Those of us who did were astonished that others didn't. I have often been involved in such discussions about less frequently used words. Maybe it isn't about fashion at all but simply that the less smart people know fewer words and feel the need to justify that.

Of course we could junk all the regional variations in language as well as the temporal ones, but that would make not only our conversation but also our writing that much more homogenous and hence boring. Perhaps we should hurry with our writing before language goes out of fashion entirely. With all our modern technology the written word may well be on its way out altogether. Why bother with text and emoticons when one can just as easily record a video? What proportion of the posts on WF contain pictures now and how fast is that proportion growing? Maybe the writing isn't on the wall any more, just pictures.


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## Jeko (Nov 21, 2015)

> In fact education may well be going out of fashion.



I'm having an education in English Language and Literature at Oxford, the institution responsible for the dictionary that reflects - not governs, but reflects - how the English language exists and has transformed over time. So I'm going to go out on a limb and say 'prescriptive grammar' and a scholarly 'education' in language have inverse proportionality in the 21st century.

At Oxford, we're being educated to see grammar as a mobile construct, not a static set of rules that stem from now-irrelevant Latin conventions; if grammar doesn't evolve, how did we get to have rules for it in the first place? Of course, a lot of prescriptions have and will remain as our language changes - but the important thing is to know that the way the English language has changed demonstrates that prescriptive grammar has no _absolute _authority in our country. One of the reasons why is that it elicits a higher and more formal register, and that register is hard to find in the majority of written communication nowadays, since that takes place online in informal discourse over social networking.

More importantly, if you trace the roots of prescriptive grammar right back to when people first tried to get it into existence, you'll find that all the literature that promoted prescriptions included provisos that they were subjective guidelines, only preferences which people can _choose _to adopt if they think it helps or adds to their communication. Later literature on prescriptive grammar then took these 'preferences' and preached them as objective truths of what 'good grammar' is, which was at the time only reflective of a small, wealthy and fully literate proportion of the country.

We can all say how we _want _our country to talk, but I'm always going to be more interested in how our country actually talks. Language changes. If we moralize our grammar and consider anything beneath the rule-set we worship not worthy of the annals of the history of our language's development, we've lost track of what language is actually about; how people communicate. You can't call the majority of a country deviating from 'prescriptive grammar' a problem that needs to be solved. You have to accept that that part of the social sphere has developed to communicate like that, and acknowledge that whatever part of the sphere you identify with is also going strong still. The English Language is composed of those who speak it, not a small proportion of 'smart' people who get to govern how people are meant to speak it and call everyone else inferior.

Also, this:



> To abandon the distinction between less and fewer is akin to dropping regional words for the sake of homogeneity.



makes no sense whatsoever. The breakdown of the distinction between 'less' and 'fewer' has done nothing to get in the way of clear communication, and neither word has been 'dropped'. Many stopped caring about the rule because the rule was only desired for it being a rule and not for any effect it had on clarity, and many stopped using 'fewer' because it didn't fit their register as well.


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## EmmaSohan (Nov 21, 2015)

To JustRob, I would say -- prescriptive rules from when? It makes sense to follow the conventions of 2015; not so much sense to follow the prescriptive rules of 1915.

To Cadence, I would point out the absolute necessity of conventions we all agree to. We writers should know that enormity doesn't mean what it used to -- people use it incorrectly so often that wrong has become the new right. But that just makes it a worthless word. My understanding is that the difference between which and then is purely prescriptive. But it's good right? It helps us communicate. I love the difference between _that _and _which_, thanks to whoever made up that rule.


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## Jeko (Nov 21, 2015)

> I would point out the absolute necessity of conventions we all agree to.



There are so many different groups that have different conventions, however, and these often confuse each other. The slang 'tab' is used to mean a cigarette in one part of the UK, and a recreational drug in another, and a Cambridge student if you're talking to an Oxford student (unless you're on a night out and want to get high).

In a scholar's eyes, this is a great thing. Sometimes we want as much unified agreement on a mode or element of communication as possible. Sometimes we want more variation. The loss of prescriptive grammar in many social groups in the UK should fall into the latter.


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## EmmaSohan (Nov 22, 2015)

Cadence said:


> There are so many different groups that have different conventions, however, and these often confuse each other. The slang 'tab' is used to mean a cigarette in one part of the UK, and a recreational drug in another, and a Cambridge student if you're talking to an Oxford student (unless you're on a night out and want to get high).
> 
> In a scholar's eyes, this is a great thing. Sometimes we want as much unified agreement on a mode or element of communication as possible. Sometimes we want more variation. The loss of prescriptive grammar in many social groups in the UK should fall into the latter.



I would miss the concept of a sentence, or that a period ends a sentence. Someone wants a grammar where we mark the end of a sentence with a comma?

And when my sentence doesn't begin with a capitalized letter, I am hoping the reader knows the rule and that I am breaking it.

Seriously, there is an issue that emphasis can be shown with italics or all-caps. Are those the same thing? In most cases, we don't need two different ways of showing emphasis if there is no difference. If we authors and readers can agree on a difference, that would be nice. Someone hopes that different groups come to different answers and hence can't communicate?


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## Jeko (Nov 22, 2015)

> Seriously, there is an issue that emphasis can be shown with italics or all-caps. Are those the same thing?



No. Italics tend to stress the length of a word, capitalization its volume.


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## EmmaSohan (Nov 22, 2015)

Cadence said:


> No. Italics tend to stress the length of a word, capitalization its volume.



I came to a similar conclusion: "italics for an emphasis that is not louder, and all-caps for an emphasis that is louder."

I guess my point is, it would be good if writers usually followed that idea and readers came to expect it. That makes it a prescription, right?


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## JustRob (Nov 23, 2015)

Cadence said:


> > To abandon the distinction between less and fewer is akin to dropping regional words for the sake of homogeneity.
> 
> 
> makes no sense whatsoever.



That comment does seem a little harsh but I'll try to improve on my evidently flawed attempt to communicate a thought. 

The statement referred to the similarity between the temporal change from "fewer" to "less" and the spatial one from say "twitten" or "ginnel" to "alley". I have no doubt that in the latter case there are still people who would use the appropriate word according to _where_ in England they were raised just as in the former there are still people who would use the appropriate word according to _when_ they were raised.

I am still involved with my old school, one which traditionally fed students to Oxbridge (if that term is still one in use), and fully understand that today's youth have far more important issues to tackle than trivial and possibly pointless linguistic rules. Yes, preferences change over time and Oxbridge has to keep up with those changes if not lead them. One such change noticed at my old school is that pupils are not following the old conventions and going to Oxbridge just because they are academically qualified to get places there. Instead they are choosing the universities best suited to their specific career aims, which in many cases are the "redbricks" seen as inferior in the past. Hence the headmaster of my school does not consider it a failing that less or fewer scholars are now attending Oxbridge as of yore. Of course I'd have to go back and read his report on the matter to discover whether he used the word "less" or "fewer" but as he is Australian I'd make no assumptions about that. 

I only know that if I used "less" in place of "fewer" then certainly some of my own contemporaries would consider me to be a lesser man. As it is some still consider me a lesser man for not taking up a place at Cambridge when I had the chance, but that was then and now scholars have to think seriously about whether a university education really is the right choice for them at all, just as I did fifty years ago. It's no surprise that I consider myself to be a time traveller when my choices in life are as much ahead of the times as behind them. Regarding being ahead of the times, I am still endeavouring to convince an Oxford scientist, an old school friend, that my thoughts about biological quantum entanglement are a pointer to future discoveries and an explanation for why I became a writer at all.

Well, after that little ramble all I can say is "Phew!" or maybe even "Phew, er!"    

Thanks for the opportunity to continue to practise my literary skills. Maybe one day I'll be permitted to _practice _them as well but at present _Oxford Dictionaries _doesn't appear to have strayed that far. (or farther or further, but furthermore who cares ultimately?)


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## Jeko (Nov 23, 2015)

> The statement referred to the similarity between the temporal change from "fewer" to "less" and the spatial one from say "twitten" or "ginnel" to "alley".



I'll reiterate - there has been no change from 'fewer' to 'less'; the words still retain their original, similar yet separate meaning. Less is applicable to mass nouns, fewer to counting nouns. We don't say 'fewer than 500g of sugar'. We do, however, more and more often, now say things like 'ten items or less' or 'less than a hundred people' in informal discourse, and more writing than ever before is now done in informal discourse because of advancements in technology and communication. What has happened is not a change to the meaning of 'less' or 'fewer', but a reduced consideration in informal discourse between 'mass nouns' and 'counting nouns'. 

I actually think items in a supermarket trolley should be seen as a measure of what you have, and thus as a mass noun. If we were to be specific, you might buy a packet of ten apples - is that one item or ten? The supermarket sees it as one, like the bank will see your 'two pound' coin as two pounds (but not as two pound coins) - _value_ is assigned and agreed upon by a body, and value is a measure. 'Item' is hence denoted as the supermarket's view on what you're buying as an item, like a 'gram' is an agreed view on how much something weights and 'pounds' is an agreed view on how much something is worth. Hence, there is a strong argument that 'item' can be seen as a mass noun. But there is also a strong argument to the contrary, and there will still be many who naturally pick one or the other because of recitation from whichever is more commonplace with no care for how the grammar works. It purely comes down to personal preference, social environment and preferred register.

'Fewer' has not become 'less' - the nouns such words are assigned to have changed status in some people's eyes due to social and economic developments. So we have a natural variety of usage occurring _with the distinction between the two still in place_. Therefore it is nothing like 'dropping regional words for the sake of homogeneity', especially since such regional words are only ever distinct by expression and not by objects of reference. Someone's 'tab' compared to another's 'smoke' compared to another's 'cig' are all still the same lung-clogging product. What deserves 'less' and 'fewer' are still 'rules' that should be considered or not depending on your social background, but what we define as deserving them has changed.


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## JustRob (Nov 23, 2015)

Cadence said:


> What has happened is not a change to the meaning of 'less' or 'fewer', but a reduced consideration in informal discourse between 'mass nouns' and 'counting nouns'.



Yes, I agree. It isn't possible to disagree with a statement that "makes no sense whatever" though, is it? Hence my remark that your comment seemed a little harsh. Returning to "less" and "fewer" though, maybe as a mathematician, the subject that I would have read had I attended Cambridge, I am inclined to make that distinction where others might not. Of course in this quantum universe the whole concept of anything being infinitesimally measurable is probably flawed anyway. As an actuarial student in a working office I used the finite difference techniques of the pragmatic financial world rather than the integral calculus that might have concerned me at Cambridge, but am equally at home with both disciplines, so "less" and "fewer" both exist within my vocabulary. How can we truly make any distinction though if a glass of water is really just a shopping basket of quanta? Equally, if someone looks at a large crowd at an event, can they really say that there are _fewer_ people than last year when they are working from a mass impression rather than a head count? Yes, the boundary is too indistinct, so it is logical to agree. 

My parting remark about "farther" and "further" was an observation that similar debatable distinctions apply there. Again I might give consideration to which word to use when others might not, but that would be my attempt to smooth the reading experience for the greatest number of readers, not to demonstrate how smart or old-fashioned I may be. As ever though, readers will draw unintended conclusions from what we write however much we try to be universal in our style. 

The skill in writing is to know and understand the rules that we are disregarding rather than to try to comply with them doggedly because we don't. I am resigned to posting within these _forums_ because those ancient Latin precedents have become irrelevant and there may be no _fora_ any more. Indeed my spelling checker insists on "correcting" that very word to "for a" on the assumption not only that Latin origins have long been forgotten but also that nowadays many users of keyboards, myself included admittedly, can't actually type. Possibly the loss of distinctions between words such as "farther" and "further" actually arises through humanity pandering to automatic spelling checkers which lack any sense of context. They really would quite happily bring about sentences that made no sense whatever, so must be used with great caution.


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## Xander416 (Nov 27, 2015)

Not really a word, but what most makes people look... grammatically challenged tome is the constant incorrect use of _'s_ in plural speech.

"I have ten car's!" "My twin daughter's are going to Harvard!" "Those ho's still owe me money!"

For every incorrectly-used apostrophe, I die a little inside.


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## WriterJohnB (Nov 27, 2015)

Add further and farther to that list.


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## Riis Marshall (Nov 28, 2015)

Hello Folks

@Phil: You don't need the 'of' after 'comprising'.

@Cadence: Bloggsie is right; it should have been 'fewer'.

Or how about the news presenter - I forget which channel - who signed off with: '... and goodnight from myself and Julia.'

I'm glad we've had this little chat.

All the best with your writing.

Warmest regards
Riis


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## Riis Marshall (Nov 28, 2015)

Hello Folks

Here are a couple more:

Simple vs Simplistic

Alternatives vs Options

And one I used incorrectly for years until, finally, I saw the light: 'His interference mitigated against a successful conclusion,' that should have been: 'His interference mitigated a successful conclusion.'

I love this forum!

All the best with your writing.

Warmest regards
Riis


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## JustRob (Dec 7, 2015)

This morning the BBC made a valuable donation to the "less" and "fewer" issue. They made the following statement.

"The NHS reports that doctors who prescribe fewer antibiotics have less satisfied patients."

If the distinction between "less" and "fewer" did not exist and "less" was used for all purposes, then it would be ambiguous whether the doctors had fewer satisfied patients or their patients were less satisfied. In these forums people often cite examples of ambiguity arising from failure to follow rules, so an example of ambiguity arising from failure to use the right words is equally appropriate.

To reduce the risk of ambiguity in what I write I shall continue to endeavour to use all the words in my vocabulary in their correct contexts. To me the words take precedence over the punctuation when attempting to convey meaning accurately and I would rather fail to use punctuation correctly than use words incorrectly.


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## Jeko (Dec 7, 2015)

> If *the distinction* between "less" and "fewer" did not exist and "less" was used for all purposes



We are however, in your example, dealing with a different distinction. 'Satisfied' isn't a mass or counting noun - it's an adjective, for the noun 'people', and normal syntax ties the determiner to the nearest word that it correlates to. So the syntax reads for us 'people who are less satisfied' -> [less satisfied] [people]. 

'Fewer', however, is a determiner that doesn't work for adjectives, and so the adjective for 'fewer satisfied people' would join with 'people' to become a noun phrase -> [fewer] [satisfied people].

The distinction here has nothing to do with the mass/counting noun distinction, and hence nothing to do with what we have discussed. In this case the distinction is that 'less' has both qualitative and quantitative properties as a determiner, while 'fewer' has only quantitative.

It is purely incidental that the example uses the same words we have used to illustrate our discussion. Also, no-one has argued that 'less' should be used for all purposes; in fact, I have already made it clear that 'incorrect' usage of less, which some could argue actually remains to be correct, is only when there is no loss of clarity. So I'm not even sure what the purpose of bringing up the example is.


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## JustRob (Dec 7, 2015)

Cadence said:


> So I'm not even sure what the purpose of bringing up the example is.



I brought it up not because it used both words but because it demonstrates the problem with "less" being used both qualitatively and quantitatively. No doubt your rule about tying to the nearer word is correct and that ought to resolve the apparent ambiguity, but my point was that the probability of misunderstanding by those not knowing such rules is increased by this flexibility in the usage of the word. Restricting use of "less" to one purpose makes the words themselves do the work rather than just word order. If distinct words exist it seems to make sense to give them distinct uses to aid comprehension. English is not a minimalistic language and not characterised by a reduction of vocabulary to the minimum necessary, at least hopefully not within these forums. Literature is a communication process which relies on the competence of both writer and reader, but the onus seems to be very much on the writer to make up for the reader's potential deficiencies from what I've read in these forums. 

I understand that some writers carry out word analyses to check that they aren't using any words too often. Maybe if they were more alert to the distinct usage of apparent synonyms overuse of such words wouldn't occur. In fact if writers don't understand that a thesaurus identifies _similar_ words rather than synonyms they can easily cause deterioration of the language. 

If you want to know the actual purpose in bringing up the example it was, as is often the case with writers' choices, an entirely personal one. I have criticised the BBC for their use of language on several occasions within these forums and today they gave me the opportunity to even things up a bit by using it in a way of which I approved. It was therefore my obligation to mention it and this thread was the most appropriate place to do so even if it did cause you irritation. Motives, especially those of writers, are such complicated things, aren't they?


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## Kevin (Dec 7, 2015)

Any common usage of those words is relevant to the discussion.


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## EmmaSohan (Dec 7, 2015)

Rob, are you still thinking about this? Me too. I saw something like: 1 in 5 children is hungry.

And in your example the less/fewer disambiguation can also apply to antibiotics.


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## violinguy (Dec 7, 2015)

lvcabbie said:


> Affect vs Effect
> Lie vs lay
> Ironic vs coincidental
> Nauseous vs. Nauseated
> ...



Those are all perfectly cromulent words. 

Proper grammar is like a turn signal in a car.  Everyone seems to be an expert and expects its usage, but no one seems to practice it nearly enough.


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## clark (Dec 9, 2015)

Three common misuses _not _included in the list are:
disinterested / uninterested
whatever / whatsoever
regardless / irregardless
I couldn't begin to count the number of educated, sophisticated, highly skilled writers who fail to understand that DISINTERESTED means objective.  And that is all,  It does not and never has and probably never will mean lacking in interest or indifferent.  But it is used that way constantly.  Drives me nuts

Then there's whatsoever.  This word is to the language what an appendix is to the body--a useless chunk.  Any dictionary will just say it means 'whatever'.  Right.  So why clutter your writing with two letters that contribute nothing?  Cut off the fat.

Finally, irregardless. This one is a real corker.  It is _NOT A WORD IN THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE !  _But people who should know better use it all the time.


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## Sam (Dec 9, 2015)

clark said:


> Then there's whatsoever.  This word is to the language what an appendix is to the body--a useless chunk.  Any dictionary will just say it means 'whatever'.  Right.  So why clutter your writing with two letters that contribute nothing?  Cut off the fat.



Incorrect.

It also means "at all".

There's a hell of a lot of difference between "I have no doubt whatsoever" than "I have no doubt whatever". 

The latter makes zero sense, which makes 'whatsoever' a lot more than just useless chunk.


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## Jeko (Dec 9, 2015)

I didn't think the title of this thread would apply to people who try to come up with further examples themselves.



> I couldn't begin to count the number of educated, sophisticated, highly skilled writers who fail to understand that DISINTERESTED means objective. And that is all, It does not and never has and probably never will mean lacking in interest or indifferent. But it is used that way constantly. Drives me nuts



The OED accepts the definition you say disinterested 'probably never will mean' as a secondary meaning of the word. It is not the _common _meaning, hence why we have the two words in the first place, but it can still correctly be in place of the uninterested. Those educated, sophisticated, highly skilled writers have been using it in place of uninterested because they are educated, sophisticated and highly skilled enough to know that they can.

It's nice we have things like the disinterested/uninterested synonyms in our language - it helps the prosody and other phonic elements of what we write to be more the way we want (disinterested really sounds nicer than uninterested anyway, because of the assonance felt through the i's)

As for 'irregardless', I've never heard someone use that in my life, though its 'incorrect' usage does date back to before the 19th century. Sounds like an overemphasis of the synonyms 'irrespective' and 'regardless', mushing them together to blast the reader with the force of both. It fails, however, since the rhythm and stress of the word is weakened by its prefix.


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## clark (Dec 10, 2015)

Newcomer here, so please bear with me if I'm inadvertently covering well-trodden ground.  JUSTROB makes the accurate point that English is "not a minimalist language", and I would add that as creative writers we strive for elegance, eloquence, even beauty and rhythm in our creative writing.  Business and technical writing, however, march to a whole different set of imperatives.  Business and technical _readers_ approach written text with a single demand foremost in their minds  *gimme !  *In fact, the written text both facilitates their action (gives them the information they need) and obstructs their action (they have to STOP to read it).  These kinds of reader's couldn't give a rat's ass about style or elegance or beauty in the writing.  Business and technical writing IS minimalist, all the way.  Example:  you are six days late filling a critical order.  Here's a perfect letter to your customer:

"Re:  Your PO R2743-15.  We shipped this order via Fedex today.  It should be at your Distribution Centre between !:00 - 3:00 PM Thurs., 10 Dec 2015.  Online tracking no. 5739284WT, or Fedex 1-888-987-3644.  As I explained last week, our heavy-duty lathe seized and had to be replaced.  In appreciation of your patience I have reduced our invoice by 5%--a saving for you of $9210.00.  Any concerns, Andy, please call me personally"

In summary, business and technical writing is minimalist because these readers have NO interest in writing.  They have an interest in results.  Period.  So the fewer words that lie between them and their results, the happier they are.  All makes perfect sense, and for someone who loves the language and loves to write,,,,,it's as boring as a bag of hammers .


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## EmmaSohan (Dec 10, 2015)

clark said:


> Newcomer here, so please bear with me if I'm inadvertently covering well-trodden ground.  JUSTROB makes the accurate point that English is "not a minimalist language", and I would add that as creative writers we strive for elegance, eloquence, even beauty and rhythm in our creative writing.  Business and technical writing, however, march to a whole different set of imperatives.  Business and technical _readers_ approach written text with a single demand foremost in their minds  *gimme !  *In fact, the written text both facilitates their action (gives them the information they need) and obstructs their action (they have to STOP to read it).  These kinds of reader's couldn't give a rat's ass about style or elegance or beauty in the writing.  Business and technical writing IS minimalist, all the way.  Example:  you are six days late filling a critical order.  Here's a perfect letter to your customer:
> 
> "Re:  Your PO R2743-15.  We shipped this order via Fedex today.  It should be at your Distribution Centre between !:00 - 3:00 PM Thurs., 10 Dec 2015.  Online tracking no. 5739284WT, or Fedex 1-888-987-3644.  As I explained last week, our heavy-duty lathe seized and had to be replaced.  In appreciation of your patience I have reduced our invoice by 5%--a saving for you of $9210.00.  Any concerns, Andy, please call me personally"
> 
> In summary, business and technical writing is minimalist because these readers have NO interest in writing.  They have an interest in results.  Period.  So the fewer words that lie between them and their results, the happier they are.  All makes perfect sense, and for someone who loves the language and loves to write,,,,,it's as boring as a bag of hammers .



Fascinating. I never thought about it, but I always assumed my readers wanted the information as quickly and easily as possible. Or I just think words are tools and not beautiful.

Didn't you stop doing needed facts with "As I explained..."? They don't care what they problem was; I didn't believe your discount was in appreciation of their patience. Instead, you're trying to manipulate impressions. (And your main character seems a little flat.) More factually (?), and of course it is a matter of style and target audience, plus I like present tense):



> We hate sending out anything late, but our f-cking lathe stopped working and had to be replaced. So I'm reducing our invoice by 5%--a savings for you of $9210.00. We really hope _that _never happens again! Call me for _any _concerns."


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## clark (Dec 10, 2015)

Thanks for the close reading Emma, but I disagree with most of your points.
1] NO explanation is needed HERE.  The moment the lathe seized, he would have phoned or emailed Andy to tell him what happened and give him a new delivery date,  So that's old news, a matter of record. The ',,,as I explained' is just a reminder that he was fully informed last week.
2]  Every business doc is a business record.  I'd never write 'fucking', no matter how well I knew Andy.  It's unprofessional, and who knows who'll be reading this note down the road.  And leaving a letter out of 'fucking'---c'mon Emma, that's high school.
3)  Accounting needs a REASON for that 5% discount.  My version is clear--customer good will, a Canada Taxation category.  Your version gives no reason, Emma.
4) The 'patience' bit is quite genuine.  Andy could have immediately pulled his PO and placed his order with another supplier.  He didn't.  You do have a point, though.  If it sounds insincere, I should have worked for a more genuine tone.
5) Emma,why did you cut the word 'personally'?  That's a SIGNAL word saying "don't talk to Shipping or floor staff, I'm so concerned here that I'm attending to this one myself, all the way

Thanks for your comments.  I have NO ego on these boards.  I call stuff straight from the shoulder and expect everyone else to reciprocate.  Like you did.  Thanks Emma.


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## EmmaSohan (Dec 10, 2015)

I am going to try to relate this to the OP.

I do not like it when words are misused to lie to me. When I read that I receive a 5% discount for waiting patiently, I try to estimate what my discount would have been had I called every day and screamed at you and demanded to talk to your supervisor. I am thinking maybe 10%. Plus I get my delivery a day earlier, because in my experience people cater to the complainers.

And I am probably the leading defender of adverbs at WF, but I don't like it when their purpose is just to impress me. I don't see a difference between "call me" and "call me personally", except that the second one is supposed to impress me. But I don't know the context -- does the first one mean that they can call you at work, and adding "personally" means they can call you on your cell on a Sunday afternoon you might be spending with your family? If the latter, then I don't believe it.

And once you tell me that this letter has multiple readers and is written for multiple agendas . . . then I am not bothered at all. I realize it has to be impersonal, has to be filled with buzzwords, you have to protect yourself, etc.

Thanks Clark. I think we have more to discuss, maybe a new discussion.


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## JustRob (Dec 10, 2015)

clark said:


> Finally, irregardless. This one is a real corker.  It is _NOT A WORD IN THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE !  _But people who should know better use it all the time.



It truly is a work of art though, a double negative all wrapped up in a single word. It ought to be stuffed and displayed in a museum of curiosities along with two-headed dogs and the like. It should _never _be used in literature or anywhere else though, not nohow.


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## clark (Dec 10, 2015)

Sam  -  that's a good example, and I withdraw my assertion that the word is 'useless'.  You've demonstrated that it can be useful for extreme emphasis; nonetheless, too often it is used when a simple change in direction is all that's needed.

We're on the brink of getting into a confrontative tone, which is counter-productive.  I'm a nasty street fighter--it's not pretty--but I do not like it and it is never necessary.  So maybe you could throttle down just a bit on language like "  words are misused to lie to me." When I write business-ese, every word is thought out carefully and is used on a bedrock of reason.  Now, if you said,  "this strikes me as manipulative. What's the reasoning here?" you give me an opportunity to _explain _rather than defend.  World of difference, don't you think?  Pretty clear to me that neither of us suffers fools gladly, and neither of us is going to take shit from the other under any circumstances.......but we can circle each other in the ring with grins on our faces as easily as scowls.

JUSTROB--since you haven't heard or read this aberration on your side of the pond, I guess it's confined to our side.  Quite common in my western part of Canada, but now that _I_ think of it, I don't recall hearing it used in the States.


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## JustRob (Dec 11, 2015)

clark said:


> JUSTROB--since you haven't heard or read this aberration on your side of the pond, I guess it's confined to our side.  Quite common in my western part of Canada, but now that _I_ think of it, I don't recall hearing it used in the States.



I can't remember encountering this word but it isn't unusual for someone in a TV interview to grasp for the right word and concoct one on the spot by adding extra syllables to something shorter. I would hope that such aberrations don't find their way into print though. It may be done intentionally for emphasis by some who do it irrelententiously of course. Ah, evidently this is the computer _without_ an active spelling checker then. Personally I'm not averse to including made up words in my writing provided that they are plausible. My objection to "irregardless" is only that it appears nonsensical with that double negative; whether it is a recognised word is beside the point to me. By making up plausible words there is always the possibility that one might introduce a new one into the language. 

My own contribution to this game was the word "hyphephilial" in the first chapter of my novel, which got a university professor of English literature thumbing through his collection of dictionaries. Perhaps he hadn't even heard of the noun "hyphephilia" so my concoction of an equivalent adjective definitely threw him. I just now ran a Google search for my adjectival form and its appearance here in WF is still the only reference to it found. At least it makes sense as a word that _ought_ to exist though, unlike "irregardless". Since writing the original chapter I have revised it to explain that there is doubt that the word actually exists, just to save any other reader having to consult a dictionary.

Maybe what is important isn't so much that the right word is used in any context but that the reader can comprehend the _intended_ meaning. Yes, the wrong word may make the writer look a bit of an idiot but that may happen when an editor gets his hands on the text anyway. While I was reading a published book by an American author I discovered "_straddle_ stones" mentioned. There are of course no such things. The correct term is "_staddle_ stones" but evidently someone didn't know this. Even though I mocked this error I didn't know where to direct that mockery. It could have been the author's own ignorance, an errant "correction" by an automatic spelling checker or the work of a human editor, so I merely directed my mockery at the publication itself. The pipeline from the author's mind to print is so long that there is a limit to how perfectly we can get anything published apparently. It is possible that we could be deliberating over spurious accuracy in our writing in these threads, just in the hope that most of our effort will survive the publishing process.

Returning to the matter of the reader comprehending the intended meaning, this morning my angel encountered a word unknown to her in a book that she was reading, that word being "encomium". Despite not knowing it she was able to guess its meaning from the context and looking it up to confirm that was a later task. On the other hand I have read published books with so many obscure words in them that my efforts to guess their meanings have floundered and so have I. Hence I don't see the word pairs mentioned here as being that big an issue since a reader is likely to realise what the correct word is in the event of misuse. The text may appear to be silly but that doesn't necessarily reflect on any one identifiable person.


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## Winston (Dec 20, 2015)

Misspelling on the back of a truck window:

"Honk if your sober".

Keep working those steps, pal.


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