Category «Words»

One word or two? (Mistake #23)

I doubt there are many editors who would reject work featuring one or more of the following minor bloopers. But I see them a lot. Curiously, I also see inconsistency in close proximity – “every day I get up and everyday I have breakfast” – which always makes me wonder whether the writers must have …

Numbers with character (Mistake #20)

It’s summer. Everybody’s been talking about hot temperatures. Here’s the Press Association, here’s Sky, here’s the Daily Record, and here’s the Daily Express, all insisting that a temperature can be hot. But it can’t. Temperature is a number. A number can be high. A number can be low. A number can be average. What a …

Of untils, tills, ‘tills, tils and ‘tils (Mistake #11)

I suppose it had to happen. Not that I considered myself immune – far from it. But mine’s a daft mistake – and it’s one that I’ve been making for some years. Worse: I’ve been inflicting it pretty much exclusively on my poor students. As if they’ve not suffered enough. The word “till” is an …

Not looking up familiar words (Mistake #6)

It’s easy to assume a word with which you’ve been familiar for years means exactly what you’ve always taken it to mean. Maybe you first came across the word in a slightly ambiguous context. Maybe nobody has ever corrected you when you’ve used it. Maybe they didn’t know either. Maybe you’ve just not given it …