In somewhat common and very incorrect use these days are phrases like “the criteria is”. This is grammatically incorrect because the word “criteria” is a ….
Category: Self Editing
BLUF: (Bottom Line Up Front) The plural of crisis is crises. crisis: an unstable or crucial time or state of affairs in which a decisive ….
Creek and creak are homophones. They are two different words that are pronounced in the same way though spelled differently and having different meanings. Creek ….
A council is meeting for discussion or advice. To counsel is a verb meaning to give advice. Before the 16th century, council and counsel were ….
The words continual and continuous both come from the word continue, but continual means start and stop, while continuous means never-ending. Continual is chronic, like ….
Something contemptible is worthy of scorn, like the contemptible jerk who talks in a theater; but contemptuous is the look you give that jerk who ….
Conscience, conscious, and conscientious derive from the same Latin roots—the prefix com- (“with,” “together,” “jointly”) and the verb scire (“to know”), and the combination, conscire, ….
The words compliment and complement were once spelled the same but compliment became distinct from complement around 1650. They’re still pronounced the same but they ….
A pipe and a pike are very different things. The noun pike is short for turnpike, which is a broad road, sometimes a toll road. ….
This is a simple eggcorn. The etymology of “coleslaw” is from the late 18th century and comes from the Dutch word “koolsla” which is a ….