homophones – Almost An Author

Common Mistakes I See When Proofreading: Vocabulary, Part 1

Vocabulary Mistakes

I’ve been proofreading a pretty wide variety of material lately—master’s dissertations, personal letters to family, freshman film class essays, presentation notes and slides, white papers for businesses, formal proposals, and book manuscripts. These arrive in my inbox at varying degrees of “finished.” You can usually tell when someone has already taken the time to proofread their document before they share it with me for my final proofread. That doesn’t mean it’s perfect, though!

Even in “proofed and polished” documents, I will usually find errors in simple vocabulary. Sometimes, it’s pretty obvious that auto-correct got the best of someone since it says “bacon” instead of “become” in the middle of a sentence about their goals for after graduate school. Another common one is typos, which might mean that there’s an extra space or extra letter or a preposition was skipped. The most common mistakes, however, are homophones.

Frequent Fliers

Do you remember what a homophone is? Homophones are words that have the same (or almost the same) pronunciation, but have different meanings and different spellings. A fairly common one that you’re probably familiar with is there vs. their vs. they’re. It kind of looks bad if you mess that up, but how do you avoid it? Maybe you’ve seen this graphic that helps you remember which one to use:

Or, if you have this one nailed down, here’s a list of ten other common errors that I’ve come across.

Homophones and Other Common Errors

Here are a few common homophones, and a couple other types of errors, that I see misused quite often. Do any of these trip you up?

Accept vs. except

Accept: I accept the roses that the stranger hands me.
Except: He is smiling, except something doesn’t seem to be quite right.

Affect vs. effect

Affect (produce an emotional response)
- The wacky Mole Day outfit affects the way that I see my teacher.
Effect (cause and effect)
- The teacher’s wacky Mole Day outfit had the effect of distracting the entire class.

Allude vs. elude

Allude: I alluded to the fact that I knew his secret.
Elude: I ran behind the building to elude my pursuers.

Everyday vs. every day

Everyday (adjective): Putting away my child’s shoes is an everyday activity.
Every day: Every day at 3:00 pm, I sit down to have a cup of tea.

Illicit vs. elicit

Illicit: The journalist wrote a story about the illicit mafia activity in her town.
Elicit: She asked questions of dangerous people, hoping to elicit exciting details in order to write a front-page story.

Than vs. then

Than (comparison): This piece of pie is larger than the other.
Then (sequence): I ate the pie, then I had to confess that I had finished the whole thing.

A lot vs. alot

A lot: Using “alot” in a sentence is always incorrect, yet people do it a lot.

*”Alot” as a single word is not a word.

Canceled vs. cancelled

Canceled: “I canceled my flight to London due to COVID,” said the businessman from New York.
Cancelled: “I cancelled my flight to New York due to COVID,” said the businesswoman from London.

*The double -l is the UK-approved spelling.

Into vs. in to

Into (movement/direction)
- I will get into trouble if I don’t tell the truth.
In to (position)
- I put the kitten in the basket to hide it.

Onto vs. on to

Onto (preposition)
- She got onto the bus at the last second.
On to (adverb + preposition)
- She needs to get on to the next phase of her project.

Keep these tips in mind the next time you’re preparing your own manuscript to send off to your editor.

What do you think?

What are some other tricky vocabulary pairs that trip you up? How do you keep them straight?

Dayna Betz is a full-time freelancer providing proofreading and editing services to help writers put their best foot forward. She also enjoys reading and writing book reviews. Head over to her site to learn more: https://betzliterary.com.

Beware These Confusables

Because spellcheck, wonderful as it may be, doesn’t catch words used improperly …

And because the English language has more than its fair share of homophones …

This month’s post alerts you to five sets of words that are prone to misuse.

Let’s start with a 3fer.

Imminent – eminent – immanent

The most common of the three is eminent, meaning “distinguished, of good repute.” It is commonly replaced with imminent, meaning “certain, very near.”

The arrival of the eminent professor is imminent.

Immanent is primarily a theological term. It means “inherent,” or “restricted to the mind.”

John Brown’s immanent belief in abolition motivated his attack on Harper’s Ferry.

Complacent – complaisant

These two adjectives with corresponding nouns (complacency, complaisance) share a Latin root, complacere, meaning to please or be pleasant. In English, however, they have morphed into different meanings. To be complacent is to be self-satisfied or so pleased with yourself that you’re smug, self-righteous, conceited.

Complaisant, on the other hand, refers to a desire to please to the extent one might be considered a pushover.

“I’m worried that Junior is too complacent about his grades and won’t be able to get into an Ivy League school,” Mrs. Jones complained.

The widow’s complaisance made her an easy target for scammers.

Descent – decent -dissent constitute another threesome that are sometimes confused.

Use the adjective decent to describe something wholesome, in good condition, appropriate, or modest.

The newlyweds’ apartment was in a decent part of town.

Descent is a noun that refers to a downward slope or in a downward direction as well as birth or lineage.

The descent may seem like the easiest part of a mountain hike, but experts say that’s when most falls occur.

In the ancient world, the line of descent was usually to the oldest son.

Decent and descent are not true homophones because they are not pronounced the same. Decent rhymes with recent, with the accent on the first syllable. Descent and its homophone dissent are pronounced with the accent on the second syllable: di SENT.

Dissent can be a verb, meaning to disagree, or a noun, meaning to have a different opinion.

The administration seemed unprepared for the level of dissent the executive order generated. Dissenting opinions were voiced throughout the country.

Altar – alter

Not only do these words have distinct meanings, they are different parts of speech.

Altar is always a noun—a place or structure on which sacrifices or incense are burned in worship. Alter is a verb, meaning to change or make different. Altar may also be used figuratively to describe something of great value or that is valued at the cost of something else.

Queen Elizabeth’s coronation took place at the altar in Westminster Abbey, forever altering the life of the young woman. Some suggest she sacrificed her own desires on the altar of the monarchy.

Rack-wrack

Finally, if you’ve ever racked your brain over the use of rack and wrack, well, you’re not alone. Even the experts concede this a confusing and complicated word pair.

The two words have different origins and meanings. The verb rack likely comes from the Dutch and means “to stretch,” while wrack comes from the Middle English for shipwreck. As a noun, rack has multiple meanings—a set of antlers, a frame for setting up pool balls, a horse’s gait, and the one applicable for this confusing twosome: a framework for stretching used as a medieval instrument of torture. And this is where we get the sense of suffering i.e. racking your brain, rack and ruin, though you’re just as likely to see wracking your brain and wrack and ruin.

What to do? It’s nerve-racking, for sure. Some advocate dropping the use of wrack. It’s an archaic term, they argue. Others, like Merriam-Webster, acknowledge wrack/rack as alternate spellings for the same word. Isn’t it nice to know that at least in this case, there’s more than one acceptable way to spell a word?