I chose to choose or lose my loose change
Choose and lose both sound like snooze but they have different numbers of o’s.
How’s that for confusing?
Be sure to select the correct spelling:
Tonight I choose to eat chicken. Last night I chose to eat beef.
Tonight they will likely lose the game. Last night he set loose his homing pigeons.
There is no benefit to canceling your travel plans
The proper spelling for these words does not contain double consonants.
benefit, benefited, benefiting
cancel, canceled, canceling
travel, traveled, traveling
According to Everything Language and Grammar there is a rule for this:
When a word of more than one syllable ends in a single consonant that is preceded by a single vowel, and the accent is on other than the last syllable of the root word, do NOT double the final consonant before adding the -ed or -ing.
A musical barnacle would be a rare find
I just read that words ending in -cle are nouns and those ending in -cal are adjectives.
In the title, musical is an adjective for barnacle.
He works in a cubical cubicle. [cubical means cube-shaped]
She wrote an analytical article about the situtation.
It was becoming a political obstacle to his re-election.
Calling something a historical chronicle would be redundant.
A single object belonging to two people
If two people own one thing, put the possessive apostrophe after the second name.
Chet Huntley and David Brinkley’s evening news program ended in 1970.
[this was a co-anchored news program]
If two people own different items, put the apostrophe after both names.
Dave Letterman’s and Jay Leno’s TV shows feature comedy and guests.
[these are separate shows on separate networks]
This post topic is real sick ;-)
nauseous means causing nausea; sickening or disgusting
The crime scene odor was nauseous.
nauseated means afflicted with nausea
He was nauseated because of the new food he had tried.
I feel nauseated after carnival rides.
nauseating means causing disgust rather than nausea
The mistreatment of the prisoners was nauseating.
A broadcast from the past
Verbs ending in -cast are irregular so they do not have normal endings in their tenses.
He broadcast the news this morning.
She forecast today’s rain last night.
He cast his line toward the rising trout.
Never use broadcasted, forecasted or casted.
Two common incorrect word usages
These words sound similar but have different meanings.
Calvary is the hill where Jesus was crucified.
Cavalry is a military group that rides horses.
Moot is another word for irrelevant (e.g. a moot point).
Mute means without speech.
Bring a dictionary with you
Brang and brung are not proper conjugations for bring.
Use bring, brought and brought.
I bring my dictionary to every editing session.
I brought my dictionary home after school today.
He has brought his dictionary to class every day this week.
Choose the correct word for your meaning
a number of means several
the number of means a more precise number
A number of people attended the event. The organizers said the number of those attending was 2,568.
a lot means a large amount
allot means to distribute in portions
Is it a while or awhile?
a while ago
for a while
awhile means for a while
More misspelled words
Across not acrossed
In front not infront
Want to not wanna