Recently in the Errors Category

Best recent line from a spam comment:

For that brief moment of today I had a little bit of sanity and than I had to hit the pavement to go look for a job. At around 9am I came to an impithany. I have no advantage entering the business world.

I was initially just amused, and then it occurred to me that this could be a useful way to track how well your comment spam is doing; you can include a nonstandard word and then search for it. But at the moment, there's only one Google result for impithany and it appears to be nonspam. So I'm back to being just amused.

This just in from the AP, by way of AOL:

[...] spacewalking repairs may be needed sometime after Discovery leaves this weekend. The problem is exasperated by the fact that a period of intense sunlight on the space station is fast approaching[...].

—"Astronauts take 3rd, final spacewalk; valve stuck, by Marcia Dunn, AP

(It may have been corrected by the time you see this, though. I saw it an hour or two after it was posted.)

I know, I know, people make mistakes all the time, and I generally see no need to call attention to them. I was just amused by this one.

Just saw this in a blog entry at alternet:

One of the lawyers handling the case for the defendants (that is, defending the constitutionality of Prop. sent us a note recently[....]

Presumably, the blog software is set to automatically turn "8)" into a smiley icon. Cute idea, but perhaps a little overzealous.

I've seen this sort of thing happen elsewhere, in software that turns ":)" into a smiley icon. But a colon is much less likely than an 8 to appear just before a close-paren in ordinary English text.

Some years back, I saw an employment ad for a major computer company in which all the text said "Lorem ipsum." Clearly someone was supposed to fill in actual copy, but had neglected to do so.

Something similar, though less extreme, happened in the San Diego Union-Tribune the other day, when their new automated pagination system made some mistakes:

A front-page story sends the reader to A10 to continue the story but you won't find the story title. Instead, you'll find the word "Slug"[...]. Below that, you'll find the phrase "Three lines of jumphed right in here, yuppers."

(And btw, I hadn't previously encountered the word "jumphed," but I like it. In case it's not clear, it refers to a "jump headline." See also the question of whether to use jump heds or jump words.)

Best spam subject line of the week:

RE: BE CAREFUL OF THE HUDLOOMS

I thought perhaps a HUDLOOM was a weaving device containing a Heads-Up Display. Or perhaps some kind of magical thingy from a Harry Potter book.

Sadly, it appears to be simply a misspelling of "hoodlum." Still, I was entertained, and thought you might be too.

Also of note is this line from the body of the message, which caught my eye during the two seconds in which I briefly glanced at the email looking for more hudloom info:

The above listed names are been traced/investigated by our team and some of them have elope the country[....]

A nicely poetic way of describing someone fleeing the law, I guess.

I know it's not good form to mock non-fluent English speakers. But I sometimes can't resist.

Something I've been seeing unusually often lately: use of "-im" words as singular.

The "-im" suffix, in words derived from Hebrew, is generally a masculine plural, as far as I can tell (I'm sure Shmuel or others will correct me if that's wrong). So words like "cherubim," "seraphim," "Nephilim," "dybbukim," "Hasidim," "kibbutzim," "klezmorim," and "goyim" are plural.

In English, other plural forms are often acceptable. For example, it's fine in English to say "cherubs," "seraphs," "dybbuks," and even "goys." (We usually talk about the Nephilim in plural; I don't think I've seen "Nephil" singular.)

But in all those cases, it's not correct to use the "-im" forms as singular. * "A Nephilim walks into a bar" is grammatically wrong; likewise * "Wow, that cherubim is totally hot."

I imagine that part of the confusion comes from Madeleine L'Engle's A Wind in the Door, in which there's a character who's referred to as a cherubim. But even there, L'Engle was aware that that's nonstandard:

Calvin made a sound which, if he had been less astonished, would have been a laugh. "But cherubim is plural."

The fire-spouting beast returned, "I am practically plural. The little boy thought I was a drive of dragons, didn't he? [...]"

A Wind in the Door, p. 56 of (I guess) the 1974 Dell edition

Of course, this is only an issue for -im words that come from Hebrew. For example, "victim," "verbatim," "grim," "disclaim," "denim," and "Sondheim" are not plurals.

Time for another installment in my Words easily confused series. (For more recent installments, see the errors category of this blog.)

As usual, an asterisk indicates an incorrect-usage example. I made up all the examples; they’re not quotes from anyone in particular.

This time around, for all the items that are on the Common Errors in English page or in the Eggcorns database, I've just provided links rather than comments.

bellow for below

Just a typo, but a spellchecker won't catch it.

conscience for conscious

Amazed I haven't mentioned this one before; very common error.

envelop for envelope

Common error.

hair-brained for hare-brained

Common error; also eggcorn.

lumpen for lumpy

The definition of "lumpen" is a little complicated, but in essence the term refers to lower-class people. It has nothing to do with being lumpy.

moral for morale

Common error.

nuptual for nuptial

This is one that I often get wrong, embarrassingly. Common error.

palette cleanser for palate cleanser

I saw this twice in an hour, in two different places, back in May. Common error.

palm

Writers often say "she palmed the pill" to mean "she shook the pill out of the bottle and into her palm," not realizing that the verb "palm" has specific connotations of stealth. It's what magicians do, for example: they palm items to make them seem to disappear.

peddle for pedal

Common error; also eggcorn.

queue for cue

As in * "That's my queue to say..." Common error; also eggcorn.

sometimes for sometime

This one's a little tricky. "Sometime" can mean either "former" ("my sometime occupation") or "at some point" ("come see me sometime"). "Sometimes" has a similar meaning to the latter, but not, in my usage, to the former; I can't say * "my sometimes occupation." However, MW11 has an entry for "sometimes" as an adjective meaning "sometime," dating back to the 16th century or so, so apparently I'm wrong about this. Still, I don't recommend this usage.

wail (or wale) for whale

Most commonly in "wail away" or "wail on"; to "whale" or "whale on" something is to strike, hit, or thrash it. "Wail away on the guitar" might be correct in some contexts, but most of the time it's a mistake. Common error; also eggcorn.

wile away for while away

Common error.

wiz kid for whiz kid

Clearly an eggcorn, but not listed yet in the eggcorn database. A whiz kid is someone who is a whiz at something; the word "whiz" may ultimately derive from "wizard" (MW11 is uncertain), but "wiz kid" is incorrect. I imagine part of the confusion here might derive from the line from The Wizard of Oz: "You'll find he is a whiz of a wiz, if ever a wiz there was!"

woebegotten for woebegone? or maybe for misbegotten?

Is this a regionalism of some sort? I've seen it a couple of times now, and I'm always a little mystified.

ya'll for y'all

This is just a misspelling, or maybe I mean mispunctuation. Apostrophes go where letters are missing; in this case, the apostrophe marks the missing "ou". There wouldn't be any reason for the apostrophe to appear after the "a." A remarkable number of well-educated people were never taught that apostrophes denote missing letters (or numbers), and thus ended up with some odd ideas about apostrophe use in certain contexts. (Yes, there are other correct uses for apostrophes too. But there's always a reason for their presence in any given context; they're not just flavoring to be sprinkled over a word.)

A CNN article this morning, talking about Gov. Tim Kaine of Virginia, notes: "Kaine could help Obama fall in the Democrats' column for the first time in 44 years."

Presumably it meant "Virginia" instead of "Obama."

This may be fixed by the time you see this entry, but I was amused enough to post about it anyway.

Cute typo in New York Times movie page:

Two lifelong plutonic friends, strapped for cash and in debt, decide to make a porno.

--from the page for Zack and Miri Make a Porno

Yes, that's meant to be "platonic." But I sorta like the idea of plutonic friends.

Entertaining mistake, from a statement by Barack Obama about Edwards dropping out of the race:

John and Elizabeth Edwards have always believed deeply ... that two Americans can become one.

--Blog entry "More on Edwards," retrieved 30 January 2008, 3:28 p.m. Pacific time

This was very widely quoted, and then very widely corrected--within a few hours after the quote appeared in dozens or hundreds of articles and blogs, it had virtually disappeared from the web.

Took me a while to track down the source of the error: the video of Obama's statement shows him saying, to a crowd at a Denver rally, "John and Elizabeth Edwards believe deeply that two Americans can become--that the two Americas can become one." (Starting around 0:50 in that video.)

A Salon blog entry explains that the Obama campaign sent out an email version of the statement that had it as "Americans." Clearly someone made a mistake somewhere. I wonder if Obama was reading from a teleprompter that contained a typo, and if the words on the prompter were from the same text source as the email that went out. Seems like the alternative would be that a staffer transcribed the statement from the speech but left the error intact, which seems unlikely.

The Obama website now gives it as "two Americas"; don't know whether that was originally posted as "Americans" and then corrected or not. Note also that the printed text has an extra phrase in the middle, a phrase Obama didn't say in the spoken version: "John and Elizabeth Edwards have always believed deeply that we can change this--that two Americas can become one." This leads me even more strongly to suspect that Obama was reading from a printed source (and modifying it on the fly), even though I had always thought he generally spoke without a prompter.

I don't mean to make a big fuss about this; people make mistakes, and typos, all the time. What made it worth an entry is that (a) it's funny, and (b) it was very widely reported for a brief time--and none of the articles that reported it seemed to notice the mistake. And (c) I'm intrigued by the ephemerality of the web--the fact that an error like this can be expunged so quickly that there remains very little evidence that it happened.

This is part 2 of my latest list; see previous entry for part 1.

These ones are simple--they're generally typing errors (where someone knows the right word and spelling but mistypes something) or believed-correct misspellings (where someone legitimately thinks this is how the word is spelled). The distinctions and categorizations I'm making are not clear-cut; the real criterion I'm using to determine whether an item goes on the previous list or this one is that the following are items I don't have much to say about.

"add" for "ad"

Common typo: An advertisement is an "ad," not an "add."

"ammendment" for "amendment"

Another common typo/misspelling.

"causality" for "casualty"

Another common typo, in sentences like * "He was a causality of war."

"diffuse" for "defuse"

I keep seeing sentences like * "She diffused the bomb."

"dilemna" for "dilemma"

Another common typo/misspelling.

"form" for "from"

A common typo; thanks to Michelle for mentioning this in a comment a couple years ago.

"formerly" for "formally"

A very common typo/misspelling: * "At the courthouse, he was formerly charged with arson."

"Hemmingway" for "Hemingway"

The man's name has only one M.

"laywer" for "lawyer"

Common typo.

"loose" for "lose"

Very common misspelling.

"make due" for "make do"

Another common typo/misspelling. (Or maybe it's an eggcorn?)

"solider" for "soldier"

Very common typo, as I mentioned in an entry on smarter spellcheckers a few months back.

"taunt" for "taut"

I think this one's just a typo, as in * "She held the line taunt." (See also taught/taut.)

"too" for "to"

Typo. I see this a lot lately. * "I didn't mean too do it."

It's been over a year since last time I did one of these (for previous installments, see my Words easily confused category); I've been bogged down by uncertainty about which of my blogs to post it in. Finally decided on this one, but by now the list has gotten very long. So I'm splitting it into two entries.

As usual, an asterisk indicates an incorrect-usage example. I made up all the examples; they’re not quotes from anyone in particular.

As usual, some of these turn out not to be errors according to the dictionary, but I figure it's worth listing things that I consider to be errors, because chances are good that a fair number of other educated people will also think they're errors.

Given the existence of the eggcorns database and the Common Errors in English site, I'm not sure there's really any point in my continuing to post these lists. But I've got a year's worth of backlogged words sitting here, so I'm gonna post at least this set. Maybe in the future I'll limit myself to items not in the eggcorns database or on the Common Errors page. Anyway, I should note that, as always, this is not intended to be an exhaustive list; just the items that I've come across or happened to notice.

"aid" for "aide"

I would normally say that a person who assists you (especially in a military setting) is an "aide," not an "aid," but the dictionary (MW11) indicates, somewhat indirectly, that both are acceptable spellings. Let your conscience be your guide. Or your aide.

"belie" for "betray"

To "belie" is, more or less, to give an indication that something is false, usually used in contexts like "The quaver in his voice belied his confident demeanor"--the subject of the verb (quaver in voice) is showing that the object (confident demeanor) is a lie or a false appearance. But I fairly often see "belie" misused to mean "reveal," where the subject of the verb supports the object rather than contradicting it. * "She said no, but the love in her eyes belied her true feelings for him." Usually in this sort of case the word the author probably means is "betrayed" or "revealed."

"bottoms up" for "bottom-up"

It's "bottom-up" design or management, not "bottoms up." "Bottoms up" is what you say when you're drinking and you're about to upend your glass.

"ex-patriot" for "expatriate"

An "ex-patriot" is someone who used to be patriotic but no longer is. (Where "ex" means "former.") An "expatriate" is someone who lives in a country other than their own. (Where "ex" means "out of.") Many expatriates were never patriots in the first place, so cannot be ex-patriots. Also, the abbreviation is "expat," not "ex-pat."

"for all intensive purposes" for "for all intents and purposes"

A reasonably common eggcorn, especially, I assume, among people who learned the phrase orally rather than by reading it.

frisson

I saw this misused twice in stories in the first few months of 2007; it wasn't really clear to me what the authors thought the word meant, but they seemed to have some nonstandard meaning in mind. A "frisson" is a little shiver or thrill, usually used with "of" and an emotion, as in "a frisson of excitement." You can't really have a frisson of something dull; to me, * "a frisson of boredom" (for example) doesn't really make sense.

"one in the same" for "one and the same"

Another fairly common eggcorn.

"peaked" for "piqued"

I'm seeing sentences like * "It peaked his anger" fairly often. To "pique" in this sense is to arouse or provoke an emotion or interest, I think most often curiosity or anger. As with many items on these lists, I'm not sure whether it's a misspelling or an eggcorn.

"purposely" for "purposefully"

There are contexts in which I'd say the two are interchangeable, but "purposefully" can also mean "with determination," and "purposely" generally can't. * "She set out purposely on the journey across town" sounds to me like it's trying to make clear that she didn't set out accidentally.

"rational" for "rationale"

A "rationale" is a reason or justification; "rational" is an adjective.

"riffled" for "rifled"

To "rifle" in this sense is to ransack, usually with the intention to steal something: "The thief rifled the safe." To "riffle" is to flip through a stack of paper. I think the reason people get confused about this (besides the similarity in spelling) is that "rifle" is most often seen in sentences like "She rifled through my files"--which means she was looking for stuff to steal, but since files are (usually vertical) stacks of paper, one could also riffle through them looking for something (even something to steal) if one were so inclined. But the two words do describe different actions and intents, even though they can sometimes be used similarly.

"scull" for "skull"

As in * "Hamlet picked up the scull." I wondered why this was so common 'til I realized a spellchecker won't catch it, 'cause "scull" has a perfectly good (though unrelated) meaning of its own.

"short-comings" for "shortcomings"

One of those words like "makeup" that a lot of people feel needs a hyphen in the middle.

"stave" for "staff"

This one isn't actually an error, but it bugs me anyway. "Staves" is a plural of "staff"; "stave" is a back-formation from "staves." "Stave" has been in use since the 13th century, so I certainly can't claim it's invalid. (And in music, where it's fairly common, I have no problem with it.) But if you're talking about a stick, and you're only using the word because you didn't know that "staff" was the original singular, consider sticking with "staff." After all, you probably wouldn't refer to one of several elves as an "elve."

"throws" for "throes"

Most often in the phrases * "death throws" or * "throws of passion." Another one that might be an eggcorn or might just be an ordinary reasonless misspelling. See also throngs of passion.

"to no end" for "no end"

I suspect most people don't consider this a mistake, but to me, "to no end" means "for no purpose," whereas the original phrase, "no end," means "endlessly" or "limitlessly." "This book annoys me no end" means, essentially, "There's no end to the annoyance this book gives me."

"tortuous" for "torturous"

"tortuous" means roundabout, winding, indirect, or devious. It has nothing to do with torture. Especially confusing because "torturous" can mean (as MW11 puts it) "painfully difficult or slow," so a slow and roundabout process can be both tortuous and torturous. But this confusion is so common that I imagine dictionaries will be listing them as synonyms soon, if they haven't already. (MW11 doesn't, but it wouldn't surprise me if some do.)

"track" for "tract"

I had only seen this in the context of * "digestive track" (which kind of makes sense if you haven't seen the original term written down), but apparently it's a common eggcorn in other contexts as well, especially * "tracks of land."

"transverse" for "traverse"

"Transverse" is an adjective meaning, more or less, "lying across"; to "traverse" something is to travel across it, so the confusion is understandable (even if it's not just a typo, which it often may be). But "transverse" isn't a verb; you can't * "transverse the desert."

"trembler" for "temblor"

Definitely an eggcorn. Appears regularly online, though is often corrected quickly; for example, a San Francisco Chronicle article originally said that a "trembler" had happened; the revised version of the article, within a few hours of the original, said "temblor" and had an additional author added to the byline, but gave no explicit indication that anything had changed.

"whelp" for "yelp"

A "whelp" is an offspring or child. Someone who gave out * "a wild whelp" every time they were surprised would get mighty tired mighty fast.

Bonus section: quotes easily confused.

A certain well-known Dylan Thomas poem is titled "Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night." Two authors, in stories two weeks apart, recently tried to refer to the poem using phrases like * "that gentle night." It's probably easy to misremember the poem as saying that it's the night that's gentle, not the going, especially because "gentle" is usually an adjective; but Thomas was using "gentle" as an adverb, essentially as if he had said "Do not go gently," or perhaps "Do not be gentle when you go."