I fear that all too many seniors are being “congradulated” for graduating from high school who don’t know that this word should be spelled “congratulations.” Try a search for this misspelling on your favorite Web search engine and be prepared to be astonished.
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Phrases like “conflicted feelings” or “I feel conflicted” are considered jargon by many, and out of place in formal writing. Use “I have conflicting feelings” instead, or write “I feel ambivalent.”
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When run-off from a chemical plant enters the river it contaminates the water, but the goo itself consists of contaminants.
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Confucius is the founder of Confucianism. His name is not spelled “Confucious,” and his philosophy is not called “Confusionism.” When you spot the confusion in the latter term, change it quickly to “Confucianism.”
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In modern English “confident’ is almost always an adjective. Having studied for a test you feel confident about passing it. You’re in a confident frame of mind. This spelling is often misused as a noun meaning “person you confide in,” especially in the misspelled phrase “close confident.”
The spelling “confidante” suggests that such a close friend might be a female, and conservatives prefer to confine its use to refer to women. But this spelling is also very common for males, and the spelling “confidant” is also used of both males and females. Either one will do in most contexts, but the person you trust with your deep secrets is not your “confident.”
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You might suppose that this word had to do with taking a census of the participants in a discussion, but it doesn’t. It is a good old Latin word that has to do with arriving at a common sense of the meeting, and the fourth letter is an “S.”
Speaking of a “general consensus” is extremely common, though strictly speaking it’s a redundant expression since a consensus is by definition a general agreement.
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Colons have a host of uses, but they mostly have in common that the colon acts to connect what precedes it with what follows. Think of the two dots of a colon as if they were stretched out to form an equal sign, so that you get cases like this: “he provided all the ingredients: sugar, flour, butter, and vanilla.” There are a few exceptions to this pattern, however. One unusual use of colons is in between the chapter and verses of a Biblical citation, for instance, “Matthew 6:5.” In bibliographic citation a colon separates the city from the publisher: “New York: New Directions, 1979.” It also separates minutes from hours in times of day when given in figures: “8:35.”
It is incorrect to substitute a semicolon in any of these cases. Think of the semicolon as erecting a little barrier with that dug-in comma under the dot; semicolons always imply separation rather than connection. A sentence made up of two distinct parts whose separation needs to be emphasized may do so with a semicolon: “Mary moved to Seattle; she was sick of getting sunburned in Los Angeles.” When a compound sentence contains commas within one or more of its clauses, you have to escalate to a semicolon to separate the clauses themselves: “It was a mild, deliciously warm spring day; and Mary decided to walk to the fair.” The other main use of semicolons is to separate one series of items from another—a series within a series, if you will: “The issues discussed by the board of directors were many: the loud, acrimonious complaints of the stockholders; the abrupt, devastating departure of the director; and the startling, humiliating discovery that he had absconded with half the company’s assets.” Any time the phrases which make up a series contain commas, for whatever reason, they need to be separated by semicolons.
Many people are so terrified of making the wrong choice that they try to avoid colons and semicolons altogether; but formal writing often requires their use, and it’s wise for serious writers to learn the correct patterns.
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Hey kids, here’s a chance to catch your English teacher in a redundancy! To compare two things is to note their similarities and their differences. There’s no need to add “and contrast.”
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The literal meaning of a word is its denotation; the broader associations we have with a word are its connotations. People who depend on a thesaurus or a computer translation engine to find synonyms often choose a word with the right denotation but the wrong connotations.
“Determined” and “pig-headed” both denote stubbornness, but the first connotes a wise adherence to purpose and the second connotes foolish rigidity.
“Boss” and “Chief Executive Officer” (CEO) can refer to the same office, but the first is less admiring and likely to connote the view of employees lower down in the company—nobody wants to be thought of as “bossy.” Higher executives would be more likely to speak admiringly of a “CEO.”
I often write “insufficiently complex” at the bottom of student papers instead of “simple-minded.” Although they denote essentially the same quality, the connotations of the first are less insulting.
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When English speakers want to be elegant they commonly resort to French, often mangling it in the process. The entrée, the dish served before the plat,usurped the latter’s position as main dish. And how in the world did French lingerie (originally meaning linen goods of all sorts, later narrowed to underwear only) pronounced—roughly—“lanzheree” come to be American “lawnzheray”? Quelle horreur! “Chaise longue” (literally “long chair”), pronounced—roughly—“shezz lohng” with a hard G on the end became in English “shayz long.” Many speakers, however, confuse French chaise with English “chase” and French longue with English “lounge” (understandable since the article in question is a sort of couch or lounge), resulting in the mispronunciation “chase lounge.” We may imagine the French as chasing each other around their lounges, but a chaise is just a chair.
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