English can become a very difficult language sometimes. There are some words that are so near in spelling and pronunciation that they very frequently switch places with disastrous (and sometimes hilarious!) results. In my career as a professional content writer, I had my share of “malapropism” (and still do to the utter annoyance of my editor), but I have learned to rectify them. Whenever I commit a new “blooper” and am pointed out, I write it down in a post-it and stick it in front of me. There are also some forums and sites that give handy hints and lessons.
There are some common words that are usually misplaced like lie/lie/lay. One is related to sleeping and lying down like “She lies on her bed” while the other is not telling the truth: “she lies about her affairs”. The third one is also a verb; it means to put down something like “softly lay the baby on the crib”. You can learn more of such common mistakes in http://www.fanfiction.net/topic/30302/1966428/1/, a forum of users who love the English language despite its peculiarities.
If you want to learn about a list of words that are commonly misused in English, you can see Wikipedia for their list of frequently misused English word. On the lighter vein, if you like to see a list of hilarious malapropism from the net and other sources, see http://www.fun-with-words.com/mala_explain.html for a quick laugh. I end my blog with this immortal line from Sheridan’s “The Rival” quoted by Mrs. Malaprop (who gave rise to the word in the first place):
“….she is as headstrong as the allegory on the banks of Nile”
Can you guess what she wanted to say???
4 comments:
Informative blog with a pinch of fun.
Tuli Ghosh
Some more common confusions:
1. loose and lose
2. than and then
3. further and farther
4. weather and whether
5. advice and advise
6. practice and practise
Good approach...It is certainly true that there is no ready made drug for correcting spelling mistakes and inappropriate use of words. We can only avoid it by being a bit cautious. Checking and cross-checking the written material can surely eliminate chances of such mistakes.
I agree that there is no such tool available for inappropriate use of words as it depends upon human intelligence but there are a lot of tools (online, offline) available for correcting spelling mistakes. You can take help of any proof reading software available in the market
Some of the free tools are
1. Concise oxford dictionary
2. wordweb
3. Google toolbar
4. www.spellcheck.net/
5. http://www.orangoo.com/spell/
Some words that I usually confused are
Wick, week, weak
There, Their
Grate, great
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