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Fossil L-Words
An aspect of English spelling that fascinates me is the existence of what I call “fossil words”— words in which a letter is embedded like a fossil in the rock—there, but no longer pronounced. Among...
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How to Pronounce the digraph AE in English
In English, the digraph ae functions chiefly as a suffix to denote the plural of Latin borrowings that retain a hint of their original “Latin-ness,” chiefly in the realm of scientific vocabulary. The...
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The Past Tense of “Lead” Is Spelled “Led”
The past tense of the verb to lead (pronounced /leed/) gives some English-speakers as much trouble as the past tenses of lay and lie. The prevalence of past tense led misspelled as lead on amateur...
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Worshipped and Worshipping Revisited
A recent comment on a past post, “Worshiping and Kidnapping” made me doubt my sanity: You note that Merriam-Webster lists worshiped and worshiping as preferred spellings in the US, but my M-W app...
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3 Types of Spelling Challenges
Often, the English language appears to have been invented by a malicious entity. But although Noah Webster—the American lexicographer who complicated things, rather than simplifying them, by...
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Disparate vs Desperate
Two words that sometimes get confused are “disparate” and “desperate”. They have quite different meanings, but they can sound very similar in some accents, and if you’re using autocorrect, you might...
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Video: 10 Incorrect Pronunciations to Avoid
As you might know, some time ago we created a YouTube channel to publish some of our content under a video format. Here’s one thing we discovered: producing videos that talk about grammar and...
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How to Improve Your English Spelling
Addyson, a sixth grader who loves to write, asks, “How can I learn to spell better?” That’s certainly a worthy question, and over the years, we’ve given many suggestions for better spelling. I Before...
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Spelling Variations
This post discusses several factors responsible for variations in spelling, with examples. For much of the history of the English language, spelling was more an art than a science; because of lapses in...
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The Prevailing Style for Prefixes: No Hyphens
The hyphen’s role as a connector between prefixes and words has diminished significantly over the last few decades—and would be even more inconsequential if writers paid more careful attention to this...
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“They” As a Nonbinary Pronoun
A few weeks ago, an acquaintance visited me, and as my visitor exited the parked car, I saw that it was still occupied. My visitor, standing before me, made a reference to “they,” but only one person...
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25 Confused Homonym Pairs
Dozens of homonyms, words that sound like other words but are spelled differently, are sometimes confused for their near doppelgängers. This post lists and defines twenty-five frequently confused word...
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12 Idioms Commonly Seen with Homonymic Spelling Errors
As, in time, idiomatic phrases become more isolated from their literal origins, writers are more likely to erroneously substitute a homonym (a word that sounds like another but is spelled differently...
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The Diversity of Over- and Under- Compounds
Becoming familiar (or more familiar) with words beginning with over– and under– must include taking into account that these compounds can be both literal and figurative (or only figurative but rarely...
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Nominalization and Conversion
Every field of endeavor has its vocabulary, and the business world, for better or worse, has contributed significantly to the English language with jargon—an insider language that often obfuscates when...
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The Complexity of Compounds
A site visitor asked about the correct usage of a word used to describe meetings held in a face-to-face format rather than in a classroom-seating orientation. Is such a gathering a round table, or a...
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Noise Canceling or Noise-Canceling?
An advertisement for “Noise Cancelling” headphones prompts this post about how easily the vagaries of spelling and punctuation complicate the simple act of describing something in writing. Which of the...
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Formal Fused Words
Inasmuch as it pains me to say it, notwithstanding my affection for fused words, nevertheless, I encourage readers to use some of the words listed hereinafter sparingly and others not at all. Evolution...
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Words Ending in “-ly” Aren’t Always Adverbs
Ask anyone to name a distinguishing characteristic of an adverb, and the reply might be that such a word ends with -ly. Although that is often true, some adverbs, such as fast, lack the ending. For...
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Mankind vs. Humankind
The issue of gender-neutral language reemerged recently in the form of a publicized incident involving a college student who was (mildly) penalized for the use of the term mankind in a paper she wrote...
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