Post: #76

Dam / Damn

Pray / Prey

Materiel / Material

Breach / Breech

Bar / Barre

Later / Latter

Taught / Taut / Torte / Tort - you'd appreciate the latter one Sp5.

Post: #77

peace / piss

peace, brothers!

Post: #78

(09-21-2014 11:02 AM)Sp5 Wrote:  catch / ketch / cache / cash / caché

(the last not much of a homonym, pronounced "ca - shay")

Cachet?

(09-21-2014 12:59 PM)Sp5 Wrote:  

(09-21-2014 12:35 PM)Brodiaga Wrote:  

(09-15-2014 09:27 AM)CrashBangWallop Wrote:  Licence/license

What is the difference?

I don't think there is a difference, it's just another British / American distinction, like defence / defense.

Like all of the colour / color / favor / favour words, and the -ise / ize words (example of a word with two variations: glamourize / glamorize).

There actually is -- 'license' is the verb form of 'licence'.

("I will license you to serve drinks here" versus "Could I check your licence, sir?")

Australian English takes after British English, but I see "license" all the time when "licence" is meant.

A few others:

threw/through
Program/programme

Would have/would of
could have/could of
should have/would of

As a self-confessed grammar Nazi, I'm pretty grateful to Sp5 for this thread. So many of these are rampant in in this country, it's depressing.

I was born in the 80's and attended school in Australia from Year 5 to Year 12 and can confirm that we were taught next to no grammar or the context in the sort of vocabulary above. While people from lesser-circumstanced backgrounds may have always been lacking in spelling and the spread of the internet and other mass media may have broadcast such foibles to a wider medium, I went to an old-money private school and it wasn't unheard of for students to be guilty of any of the above mistakes.

I remember taking Spanish 1 at uni and our lecturer actually had to explain what a noun, verb, subject, object were!

I'm talking kids who went on to become university students and professionals. The worst thing is, i's not just the STEM fields; some of these aforementioned professionals are teachers!

I wonder what hope our next generations have if some of the people responsible for their foundations in reading and writing can't even differentiate between "you're/your", "they're/there/their" or "too/to". I don't care if u ryt lyk this on Facebook/SMS, but if you're going to impart these stupid homophones errors to your students, the end is nigh.

Post: #79

hoard / horde

Post: #80

recently saw a mistake on this in a comment:

shear / sheer

Post: #81

Posted in a thread here yesterday:

Conceded instead of conceited.

Post: #82

Maybe a bit off topic.

When I was skimming through some of my posts I see I'm always leaving some words out in my sentences.
I don't know why this happen.
I never speak like that.
And it only happens when I'm writing in English.

I'm always thinking in English here on RVF and I'm sure I'm thinking these words meanwhile I'm typing but somehow I'm unknowingly skipping to type some words down.

It's like I'm writing for people to read between the lines.

Post: #83

(12-07-2014 08:37 AM)Chaos Wrote:  Maybe a bit off topic.

When I was skimming through some of my posts I see I'm always leaving some words out in my sentences.
I don't know why this happen.
I never speak like that.
And it only happens when I'm writing in English.

I'm always thinking in English here on RVF and I'm sure I'm thinking these words meanwhile I'm typing but somehow I'm unknowingly skipping to type some words down.

It's like I'm writing for people to read between the lines.

I do the same thing. It bugs me and I know it hurts my credibility. I try to proof read things but some how my mind still fills in the gaps and I miss those kinds of errors.

Post: #84

"For all intensive purposes" - hate that one.

Ceiling/sealing. Had a buddy write an entire report using the wrong one. Born and raised in Canada.. No excuse.

Knowing the difference between every single tricky word pair in the English language isn't all that important. What's important is knowing what you don't know. There comes a point where you intuitively know that the word you have written is wrong. You may not know what is correct but you have at least identified that an error exists.

The danger zone is where mastery of the langage has occurred but that intuitive sense has not yet developed.

Post: #85

(12-07-2014 11:46 AM)Ensam Wrote:  

(12-07-2014 08:37 AM)Chaos Wrote:  Maybe a bit off topic.

When I was skimming through some of my posts I see I'm always leaving some words out in my sentences.
I don't know why this happen.
I never speak like that.
And it only happens when I'm writing in English.

I'm always thinking in English here on RVF and I'm sure I'm thinking these words meanwhile I'm typing but somehow I'm unknowingly skipping to type some words down.

It's like I'm writing for people to read between the lines.

I do the same thing. It bugs me and I know it hurts my credibility. I try to proof read things but some how my mind still fills in the gaps and I miss those kinds of errors.

Happens to me as well. I think it happens to all of us, somehow our brains say the word and they think we have already typed down the word and sometimes it is not the case, yet we continue typing down the next words from the sentence. Interesting stuff.

Post: #86

Lotsa good ones, but let's address the most common word to sound smarter:

Hung / Hanged

You: "What happened to Billy?"
Friend: "Oh, Billy was hung for treason"
You: "Actually, Bill was hanged for high treason. Hanged is actually the past tense and past participle of hang when referring to putting to death by hanging. But that's too bad for Billy."

Post: #87

(12-09-2014 09:18 AM)christpuncher Wrote:  "For all intensive purposes" - hate that one.

Yes, it comes up a lot.

For those that may not know - it's "for all intents and purposes".

Another that's a bit OT (not homophone related) is "the exception to the rule". It's "the exception that proves the rule".

"It means that the presence of an exception applying to a specific case establishes ("proves") that a general rule exists. For example, a sign that says "parking prohibited on Sundays" (the exception) "proves" that parking is allowed on the other six days of the week (the rule). A more explicit phrasing might be "the exception that proves the existence of the rule."

Another one that I've seen crop up on the forum is the misuse of the word "specially" in place of "especially".

E.g. "John appreciates Suzy's home cooking, especially when she gives him dessert."

Not specially.

Correct usage would be:

"The speech was written specially for the occasion".

Post: #88

^ and put quotation marks after the full-stop/period, unlike me in most cases above.

Post: #89

Constable / cuntstubble
piston broke / pissed n broke

Post: #90

^ pissed and posting more like it Bazzwaldo, haha.

Post: #91

The worst ever: Your / You're.

Everytime someone makes a mistake on that, I immediately categorize them as dumb. It is just impossible to confuse both.
Your: This is YOUR girl.
You're: YOU'RE a good player. (you are)

I am not even a native speaker but that makes me cringe everytime.

There should be a captcha asking the user to put the correct form of your / you're before joining a forum.

Post: #92

Just saw this one misused in a comment:

tenant for tenet

Post: #93

Some of these mistakes come natural if one is away from education for an extended period of time.. even self education and reading is enough to help keep one on track.

Something else that seems to affect me is learning other languages... If I'm using spanish a lot it completely destroys my english and I mix all sorts of words up.

Post: #94

I came unstuck in a recent post - using the word "wrapped" instead of "rapped".

Wrapped = to wrap something up ("I wrapped the gift before I gave it to Jess for her birthday")
Rapped = to hit or smack - it mostly gets used to describe a figurative 'hitting' ( I got "rapped over the knuckles" by my Boss today)
Rapt = with wonderment and joy ("I am rapt with joy when I walk into the shops and see gluten free food")

Post: #95

What really gets my goat is when someone says should of as in "I should of banged her last night." instead of should've, the contraction of should have. Don't these people realize the importance of spelling and grammar?

"but Scott Free it has no baring on hour daily lifes"

Paying attention to how you speak and write says a lot about you. Sp5 did a great service calling this out. After all, it is a very slippery slope between:

Helping your Uncle, Jack, off a horse.

and

helping your uncle jack off a horse

"i dunno i dont sea a difference in what your saying"

Grammar is crucial, I tell you. Consider:

Hey! Let's eat, Grandma!
hey lets eat grandma

Use proper grammar and speak proper English. It saves lives!

"lol shut up Scott Free im Amurican and i can fuck up my language how i want"

*sigh* We're doomed.

Post: #96

Without naming names, there is one high repped member on this forum, who, without fail always writes “should of” and “would of”, as well as regularly misspelling words.

I’m guessing their spell-checker is not on for the misspelled portion, but, when considering the quality of their posts you’d think that they’d know that it’s “should have” and “would have”.

This miss-wording is most likely perpetuated due to the phonetics of the two words when combined and said in a quick fashion. “Have” is easily confused for “of”, especially when contracting to “should’ve” and “would’ve”.

Post: #97

(09-13-2014 07:22 AM)Old Fritz Wrote:  It's a pet peeve of mind to see people write t "loose". As in, I am going to loose the bet.

loose/lose

I thought they were pronounced discretely?

Loose is pronounced with an 's' where as the word lose is pronounced with a 'z'.

G

Post: #98

One not many know about:

Calvary vs. Cavalry

Calvary is a rarely used word that denotes great suffering, stemming from the Bible and Christ's crucifixion.

Cavalry is exactly what you think it is; a battalion of horses, tanks, or whatever moves quickly in battle.

Post: #99

I overheard an idiot say "let's nip this in the butt." I asked him to repeat it and he said it the same way.

It's "nip it in the bud," for the record. It means to put an end to something before it becomes a bigger problem.

Post: #100

'til/till

I've been noticing a marked increase of the incorrectly-used word, "till," being used as a shortened version of 'til, which itself is a condensed version of until.