commonly misused words

The Old Editor Brings It

by

This post by John E. McIntyre originally appeared on The Baltimore Sun on 10/5/15.

The question: I believe you are an expert at this. Please explain the usage of take and bring! I am driven crazy by what, seems to me, is the mixed and incorrect usage of these words.

The Old Editor answers: What causes distress is a schoolroom oversimplification, the curse of English grammar.

Your teachers likely told you that bring is for movement toward the speaker, take for movement away from the speaker. This is apt in many cases.

But that distinction collapses when, as Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary of English Usage says, when the point of view is irrelevant. This will require some explication.

Grammar Girl gives an example: “The simple rules fall apart when you consider an event in the future where nobody has arrived yet. Do you bring rum cake to the school bazaar or do you take rum cake to the school bazaar? It simply depends on where you want to place the emphasis of the sentence—which perspective you want to adopt.”

 

Read the full post on The Baltimore Sun.

 

You Pays Your Money and You Takes Your Chances

by

This post by John E. McIntyre originally appeared on The Baltimore Sun on 5/7/15.

Yesterday I tweeted: “ ‘Staunch the flow’? Am staunchly upholding a preference for ‘stanch.’ #amediting”

Dai Hawkins, a regular and thoughtful reader, promptly pointed out that the history in the Oxford English Dictionary shows that the two words have been functionally interchangeable for centuries. He later also cited Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary of English Usage to similar effect.

He was quite right. To insist on limiting staunch as an adjective meaning “steadfast” and stanch as a verb meaning “to stop the flow of” is an arbitrary choice, though the American Heritage Dictionary’s usage note indicates that these are still the most common senses in the United States.

Editing often means making arbitrary choices. A house style merely indicates that when there is more than one acceptable way to capitalize or abbreviate, we arbitrarily pick one to avoid distracting the reader with needless variants. But when we have pairs of words with blurred meanings, as staunch/stanch, the arbitrary choice becomes more difficult.

 

Read the full post on The Baltimore Sun.

 

10 Words That You've Probably Been Misusing

by

This post by Tyler Vendetti originally appeared on Hello Giggles on 7/21/13.

There are so many words in the English language that it’s not surprising that the definitions for some of them have gotten mixed up over the years. It’s possible that you’ve gone your entire life without realizing your mistakes. I’m sure people have noticed. One day, you were probably walking down the street, casually chatting with an old friend, and one of these words slipped out of your mouth. Before you can move on to your story about how Mufasa would actually make a very attractive human, your friend stops to correct your error, and suddenly, your whole life starts to feel like one giant lie. How long have you been using that word incorrectly, you wonder? How many angry Facebook rants have you ruined with your improper grammar? While I can’t give you an answer to those questions, I can at least provide you with a list of other tricky words so that you may never have to suffer from this embarrassment ever again:

 

1) Travesty

What you may think it means: a tragedy, an unfortunate event

What it actually means: a mockery; a parody

This one, I’ll admit, is my own personal error. For the longest time, I equated travesty with tragedy, mostly because in passing, they sound like the same word. It’s stupid, I know, but if you knew how many times I confused fetal position with beetle position, you wouldn’t be laughing. It’s a serious problem.

 

Click here to read the full post on Hello Giggles.