Çevrimdışı

COARSE / COURSE

“Coarse” is always an adjective meaning “rough, crude.” Unfortunately, this spelling is often mistakenly used for a quite different word, “course,” which can be either a verb or a noun (with several different meanings).

COLLABORATE / CORROBORATE

People who work together on a project collaborate (share their labor); people who support your testimony as a witness corroborate (strengthen by confirming) it.

COLLAGE / COLLEGE

You can paste together bits of paper to make a collage, but the institution of higher education is a college.

COMPARE AND CONTRAST

Hey kids, here’s a chance to catch your English teacher in a redundancy! To compare two things is to note their similarities and their differences. There’s no need to add “and contrast.”

COMPARE TO / COMPARE WITH

These are sometimes interchangeable, but when you are stressing similarities between the items compared, the most common word is “to”: "She compared his home-made wine to toxic waste.” If you are examining both similarities and differences, use “with”: “The teacher compared Steve’s exam with Robert’s to see whether they had cheated.”

COMPLEMENT / COMPLIMENT

Originally these two spellings were used interchangeably, but they have come to be distinguished from each other in modern times. Most of the time the word people intend is “compliment": nice things said about someone ("She paid me the compliment of admiring the way I shined my shoes.”). “Complement,” much less common, has a number of meanings associated with matching or completing. Complements supplement each other, each adding something the others lack, so we can say that "Alice’s love for entertaining and Mike’s love for washing dishes complement each other.” Remember, if you’re not making nice to someone, the word is “complement.”

CONSCIENCE, CONSCIOUS, CONSCIOUSNESS

Your conscience makes you feel guilty when you do bad things, but your consciousness is your awareness. If you are awake, you are conscious. Although it is possible to speak of your “conscious mind,” you can’t use “conscious” all by itself to mean “consciousness.”

CONTINUAL / CONTINUOUS

“Continuous” refers to actions which are uninterrupted: “My upstairs neighbor played his stereo continuously from 6:00 PM to 3:30 **.” Continual actions, however, need not be uninterrupted, only repeated: “My father continually urges me to get a job.”

COPYWRITE /COPYRIGHT

You can copyright writing, but you can also copyright a photograph or song. The word has to do with securing rights. Thus, there is no such word as “copywritten”; it’s “copyrighted.”

COULD OF, SHOULD OF, WOULD OF

COULD HAVE, SHOULD HAVE, WOULD HAVE
This is one of those errors typically made by a person more familiar with the spoken than the written form of English. A sentence like “I would have gone if anyone had given me free tickets” is normally spoken in a slurred way so that the two words “would have” are not distinctly separated, but blended together into what is properly rendered "would’ve.” seeing that “V” tips you off right away that “would’ve” is a contraction of “would have.” But many people hear “would of” and that’s how they write it. Wrong.

Note that “must of” is similarly an error for “must have.”


COUNCIL / COUNSEL / CONSUL

The first two words are pronounced the same but have distinct meanings. An official group that deliberates, like the Council on Foreign Relations, is a “council”; all the rest are “counsels”: your lawyer, advice, etc. A consul is a local representative of a foreign government.

CRITIQUE / CRITICIZE

A critique is a detailed evaluation of something. The formal way to request one is “give me your critique,” though people often say informally “critique this"—meaning “evaluate it thoroughly.” But "critique” as a verb is not synonymous with “criticize” and should not be routinely substituted for it. “Josh critiqued my backhand” means Josh evaluated your tennis technique but not necessarily that he found it lacking. “Josh criticized my backhand” means that he had a low opinion of it.

You can write criticism on a subject, but you don’t criticize on something, you just criticize it.

DEFUSE / DIFFUSE

You defuse a dangerous situation by treating it like a bomb and removing its fuse; to diffuse, in contrast, is to spread something out: “Bob’s cheap cologne diffused throughout the room, wrecking the wine-tasting."

DEMOCRAT / DEMOCRATIC

Certain Republican members of Congress have played the childish game in recent years of referring to the opposition as the “Democrat Party,” hoping to imply that Democrats are not truly democratic. They succeed only in making themselves sound ignorant, and so will you if you imitate them. The name is “Democratic Party.”

DEPRECIATE / DEPRECATE

To depreciate something is to actually make it worse, whereas to deprecate something is simply to speak or think of it in a manner that demonstrates your low opinion of it.

DESERT / DESSERT

Perhaps these two words are confused partly because “dessert” is one of the few words in English with a double “S” pronounced like “Z" ("brassiere” is another). That impoverished stretch of sand called a desert can only afford one “S.” In contrast, that rich gooey extra thing at the end of the meal called a dessert indulges in two of them. The word in the phrase “he got his just deserts” is confusingly pronounced just like “desserts.”

DEVICE / DEVISE

“Device” is a noun. A can-opener is a device. “Devise” is a verb. You can devise a plan for opening a can with a sharp rock instead. Only in law is “devise” properly used as a noun, meaning something deeded in a will.

DIFFER / VARY

“Vary” can mean “differ,” but saying “our opinions vary” makes it sound as if they were changing all the time when what you really mean is “our opinions differ.” Pay attention to context when choosing one of these words.

DISC / DISK

“Compact disc” is spelled with a “C” because that’s how its inventors decided it should be rendered; but a computer hard disk is spelled with a “K” (unless it's a CD-ROM, of course). In modern technological contexts, “disks” usually reproduce data magnetically, while “discs" reproduce it “optically,” with lasers.


DISCREET / DISCRETE

The more common word is “discreet,” meaning “prudent, circumspect”: “When arranging the party for Agnes, be sure to be discreet; we want her to be surprised.” “Discrete” means “separate, distinct”: “He arranged the guest list into two discrete groups: meat-eaters and vegetarians.” Note how the T separates the two Es in “discrete.”

DISINTERESTED / UNINTERESTED

A bored person is uninterested. Do not confuse this word with the much rarer disinterested, which means “objective, neutral.”

DOMINATE / DOMINANT

The verb is “dominate” the adjective is “dominant.” The dominant chimpanzee tends to dominate the others.

DONE / DID

The past participle of “do” is “done,” so it’s not “they have did what they promised not to do” but “they have done. . . .” But without a helping verb, the word is “did.” Nonstandard: “I done good on the test.” Standard: “I did well on the test.”

DRANK / DRUNK

Many common verbs in English change form when their past tense is preceded by an auxiliary (“helping”) verb: “I ran, I have run.” The same is true of “drink.” Don’t say “I’ve drank the beer” unless you want people to think you are drunk. An even more common error is “I drunk all the milk.” It’s “I’ve drunk the beer” and “I drank all the milk.”

DRIVE / DISK

A hard drive and a hard disk are much the same thing; but when it comes to removable computer media, the drive is the machinery that turns and reads the disk. Be sure not to ask for a drive when all you need is a disk.

DUAL / DUEL

“Dual” is an adjective describing the two-ness of something—dual carburetors, for instance. A “duel” is a formal battle intended to settle a dispute.

DYEING / DYING

If you are using dye to change your favorite t-shirt from white to blue you are dyeing it; but if you don’t breathe for so long that your face turns blue, you may be dying.

e.g. / i.e.

When you mean “for example,” use e.g. It is an abbreviation for the Latin phrase exempli gratia. When you mean “that is,” use “i.e.” It is an abbreviation for the Latin phrase id est. Either can be used to clarify a preceding statement, the first by example, the second by restating the idea more clearly or expanding upon it. Because these uses are so similar, the two abbreviations are easily confused. If you just stick with good old English “for example” and “that is” you won’t give anyone a chance to sneer at you. If you insist on using the abbreviation, perhaps “example given” will remind you to use “e.g.,” while “in effect” suggests “I.E.”

Since e.g. indicates a partial list, it is redundant to add “etc.” at the end of a list introduced by this abbreviation.

ECONOMIC/ECONOMICAL

Something is economical if it saves you money; but if you’re talking about the effect of some measure on the world’s economy, it’s an economic effect.

EMIGRATE/IMMIGRATE

To “emigrate” is to leave a country. The E at the beginning of the word is related to the E in other words having to do with going out, such as “exit.” “Immigrate,” in contrast, looks as if it might have something to do with going in, and indeed it does: it means to move into a new country. The same distinction applies to “emigration” and “immigration.” Note the double M in the second form. A migrant is someone who continually moves about.

EMINENT/IMMINENT/IMMANENT

By far the most common of these words is “eminent,” meaning “prominent, famous.” “Imminent,” in phrases like “facing imminent disaster,” means "threatening.” It comes from Latin minere, meaning “to project or overhang.” Think of a mine threatening to cave in. Positive events can also be imminent: they just need to be coming soon. The rarest of the three is “immanent,” used by philosophers to mean “inherent” and by theologians to mean “present throughout the universe” when referring to God. It comes from Latin manere, “remain.” Think of God creating man in his own image.

When a government exercises its power over private property it is drawing on its eminent status in society, so the proper legal phrase is “eminent domain.”

EMPATHY/SYMPATHY

If you think you feel just like another person, you are feeling empathy. If you just feel sorry for another person, you’re feeling sympathy

ENGLISH/BRITISH

Americans tend to use the terms “British” and “English” interchangeably, but the United Kingdom of Great Britain is made up of England plus Scotland and Wales. If you are referring to this larger entity, the word you want is “British.” Britons not from England resent being referred to as “English.”

If you want to include Northern Ireland, technically you have to use the rather cumbersome name “The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.”

ENQUIRE / INQUIRE
These are alternative spellings of the same word. “Enquire” is perhaps slightly more common in the U.K., but either is acceptable in the U.S.

ASSURE / ENSURE / INSURE

To “assure” a person of something is to make him or her confident of it. According to Associated Press style, to “ensure” that something happens is to make certain that it does, and to “insure” is to issue an insurance policy. Other authorities, however, consider “ensure” and “insure” interchangeable. To please conservatives, make the distinction. However, it is worth noting that in older usage these spellings were not clearly distinguished.

European “life assurance” companies take the position that all policy-holders are mortal and someone will definitely collect, thus assuring heirs of some income. American companies tend to go with “insurance” for coverage of life as well as of fire, theft, etc.

ENVIOUS / JEALOUS

Although these are often treated as synonyms, there is a difference. You are envious of what others have that you lack. Jealousy, on the other hand, involves wanting to hold on to what you do have. You can be jealous of your boyfriend’s attraction to other women, but you’re envious of your boyfriend’s CD collection.

EPIGRAM / EPIGRAPH/
EPITAPH / EPITHET

An epigram is a pithy saying, usually humorous. Mark Twain was responsible for many striking, mostly cynical epigrams, such as “Always do right. That will gratify some of the people, and astonish the rest.” Unfortunately, he was also responsible for an even more famous one that has been confusing people ever since: “Everyone is a moon, and has a dark side which he never shows to anybody.” It’s true that the moon keeps one side away from the earth, but—if you don’t count the faint glow reflected from the earth—it is not any darker than the side that faces us. In fact, over time, the side facing us is darkened slightly more often because it is occasionally eclipsed by the shadow of the earth.

An epigraph is a brief quotation used to introduce a piece of writing (see this example from Shakespeare) or the inscription on a statue or building.

An epitaph is the inscription on a tombstone or some other tribute to a dead person. A collection of epitaphs.

In literature, an epithet is a term that replaces or is added to the name of a person, like “clear-eyed Athena,” in which “clear-eyed” is the epithet. You are more likely to encounter the term in its negative sense, as a term of insult or abuse: “the shoplifter hurled epithets at the guard who had arrested her.”

ETHICS / MORALS / MORALE

Strictly speaking, ethics are beliefs: if you have poor ethics, you have lax standards; but your morals are your behavior: if you have poor morals, you behave badly. You can have high standards but still fail to follow them: strong ethics and weak morals. “Morale” formerly had both these meanings and you will find them attached to the word in some dictionaries, but you would be wise to avoid it in either of these senses in modern writing. By far the most common current use of “morale” is to label your state of mind, particularly how contented you are with life. A person with low morals is bad; but a person with low morale may be merely depressed.

FARTHER / FURTHER

Some authorities (like the Associated Press) insist on “farther” to refer to physical distance and on “further” to refer to an extent of time or degree, but others treat the two words as interchangeable except for insisting on “further” for “in addition,” and “moreover.” You’ll always be safe in making the distinction; some people get really testy about this.

FEARFUL / FEARSOME

To be “fearful” is to be afraid. To be “fearsome” is to cause fear in others. Remember that someone who is fierce is fearsome rather than fearful.


FOOTNOTES / ENDNOTES

About the time that computers began to make the creation and printing of footnotes extremely simple and cheap, style manuals began to urge a shift away from them to endnotes printed at the ends of chapters or at the end of a book or paper rather than at the foot of the page. I happen to think this was a big mistake; but in any case, if you are using endnotes, don’t call them “footnotes.”

FOR ONE- FOR ONE THING

People often say “for one” when they mean “for one thing”: “I really want to go to the movie. For one, Kevin Spacey is my favorite actor.” (One what?) The only time you should use “for one” by itself to give an example of something is when you have earlier mentioned a class to which the example belongs: “There are a lot of reasons I don’t want your old car. For one, there are squirrels living in the upholstery.” (One reason.)

__________________

#MustafaKemaLAtatürkTorunuyum..ღ ❦

{22~02~`22..∞}
{09~09~`22..ღ}