My first language was English: specifically American English of the northeast USA, more specifically the dialects of Manhattan and Setauket, New York; but my parents grew up in Maryland and France, respectively, so I didn't first learn to talk in Manhattanese or LonGislandese, though the way I pronounce "dog" pegs me as an Easterner.

I made this page to list aspects of English -- some "correct" but most "incorrect" -- that most obsess me when thinking about how people, mostly Americans, use this odd, cool, plastic language. But I am not a pedant: Regional dialects are the lifeblood of languages and are no less correct than what is put into textbooks. Language's function is to make oneself understood by others, and as long as that is accomplished, the language itself, especially English, can be very accommodating and forgiving.

With understanding as the goal, all languages come with sets of rules that govern syntax, grammar, spelling, punctuation, and so on. However, the teaching of English in the USA has for a long time been shabby at best. The lack of requirement of a second language in grade schools has made it worse. Also, the mass media, especially TV and radio, have codified or legitimized many idioms current and passé which never made sense in terms of the language's structure, or which may never have been intended to start a trend, but through disseminations to millions at once have become almost universal. Many of these phrases or word-uses bother me to the point of actual pain, and as a public service for those who "share mah pain" or care about making sense in English, and for those who wish their English teachers had paid more attention to spelling or phonics or grammar, rather than rote recognition of letter patterns (which has probably contributed to American illiteracy as much as any other cause), I've written this page as a corrective to the juggernaut of the Lowest Common Denominator, which should never be any society's standard or yardstick. There. I have spoken. (And I will continue.)

Though I am a very good speller, and understand English grammar better than many teachers of English, I don't think all the rules of English make enough sense to always be followed (Do you call that a split infinitive? INCORRECT. See "to boldly go".), and English spelling should have been reformed decades if not centuries ago, but without a new alphabet to better represent all the modern English phonemes, it's pointless to try: better for us all to consistently spell words in a better way until the dictionary writers take notice. For instance, why is "inasmuch" one word but "next to" is not spelled "nextto" or even "nexto?" Simply because we haven't started writing it that way.

-able versus -ible

We see everywhere signs outside of antique shops and other relic stores spelled, "Antiques and Collectables". Most of us think nothing of it since we don't really see what we're looking at most of the time and almost none of us can spell anymore. But those who still can spell know that this spelling is wrong, and it should be "collectibles". (Some say "collectable" is a British spelling. So is "jewellery". This is about American English.) The problem with this, for those willing to learn, is that there is no obvious rule which words should end in "-able" and which in "-ible". It usually depends on the language the root came from, but since we don't study Latin or Greek anymore, this is no help for most of us.
Here follows a small list of maddening examples:

collectible / valuable
deplorable / reprehensible / objectionable / indefensible
comprehensible / understandable / intelligible / reasonable
defensible / defendable / justifiable / plausible
dependable / responsible / sensible / honorable
commestible / drinkable / potable / edible / chewable / digestible
flammable/ combustible
indivisible / inseparable
reversible / invertible / flippable / collapsible / inflatable
risible / laughable

There is no hope, except to learn them all separately. But since that's the way we've been learning every aspect of English anyway for the past forty years, it wouldn't seem to be that hard. The real problem is that people just don't pay attention.

I except your apology??

"Accept" and "except" are NOT THE SAME WORD, whether or not your dialect makes them sound the same. They mean in fact almost opposite things. I knew an ENGLISH TEACHER who got these confused. If it helps, the prefix "ex" has to do with being outside and away, and "ac" has to do with movement in a particular direction, often toward oneself. If only we were still taught Latin.

All told or all tolled?

I have long thought that it should be "all tolled", but it's not. Read the history here. Thanks to a music educator friend of mine for this one.

All together or altogether?

I just read an email in which was written the following: "All together, they made themselves (and Dell) a pretty sexy-looking parking lot." I'm saving time bere by quoting my computer's dictionary:

Note that "altogether" and "all together" do not mean the same thing. "Altogether" means "in total, totally" as in: there are six bedrooms altogether, or that is a different matter altogether, whereas "all together" means "all in one place" or "all at once," as in it was good to have a group of friends all together, or they came in all together.

In the context of the quoted sentence, "altogether" should have been used.

(I am here ignoring the "naked" meaning of "altogether", where it functions as a noun in the idiom "in the altogether".)

But watch out: not all words with such endings come in pairs, and some that do have aquired alternate partners:

As with many things English, rote memorization is really the only hope for getting these right. If you care.

definitely or definately?

Definitely this is spelled "definitely". This is in a small family of words which include in them the word "finite", meaning having a limit or end. Finite, infinite, definite, indefinite, infinitesimal. "Adequately", "inviolately", "consummately", "innately": yes; "definately": deFINITEly no.

déjà vu

Curiously, Americans pronounce the first of these words tolerably closely to the French original, but the second is not so fortunate.

The French word "vu" means "seen": it is the past participle of the verb "voir" which means "see". The word sounds somewhere between "vee" and "vrr" (not a rolled British "r" but a good wet American "r" glide). But Americans pronounce it "voo" which sounds just like the French word "vous" which means "you-all" or "you, Sir/Madam". So to a French speaker, when an American says "déjà vu", it means "you already". Try doing it more like the French way: what could it hurt?

A word about a common phrase featuring these words: "It feels like déjà vu all over again." This was, when first uttered, probably meant as a joke since the "all over again" is redundant due to the the fact that "déjà vu" means "already seen", and is used to convey the idea that "we've seen this already, it's happening all over again". The whole phrase "déjà vu all over again" is, in fact, one of the main entries in the files of the Department of Redundancy Department. It has a file folder specific and dedicated solely to itself alone. It's one of the main entries in the files of the Department of Redundancy Department. It has a file folder specific and dedicated solely to itself alone. Wow, I just had a feeling of...

I don't expect this mispronunciation ever to go away, but maybe we can make people THINK by pronouncing it other than how they're used to hearing it. As long as we don't seem snotty in so doing, or -- Thor forbid -- French, no no, we cannot be having such a kind of theeng as thees!

he got his just desserts?

NO, it's "just deserts". I know it looks just like the word that means vast expanses of sand, but it's derived from the verb "deserve", not the verb "desert" or the noun "dessert". See perMIT/PERmit. He didn't deserve a good dessert after turning the place into a desert, so in receiving a turd sandwich he got his just deserts.

different than or different from?

This is a tough one, because "different" is used in situations where one would also use comparatives such as "more" or "better" in which "than" would be the proper word to come between the comparative and the thing compared ("my dog is better than your dog"). But "different" is fundamentally DIFFERENT FROM these other words. It comes from the verb "differ" (not "to differ") which is used in sentences like "My data differ from your data". Another way of saying this would be, "my data are different from your data". One would never say, "my data differ than your data", yet people routinely say things like "my data are different than your data" because it seems to make as much sense as "my data are better than your data".

But the word "different" inherently rejects comparison between two things, concepts, opinions or whatever. If two things are not the same, or at least of the same kind, they can't be compared for quality or quantity or aspect or any other feature. "Apples and oranges" is the usual clichˇ for such things, but apples and oranges are both fruits and thus can be compared for sweetness, tartness, color, juiciness, etc.: "Oranges are juicier than apples." "Juicier" is a comparative adjective; "different" is not.

However, this type of construction is not a major transgression, given the poor state of comprehension of English today. In fact, my beloved onboard dictionary doesn't even list it as wrong, although it does state that "different" is not a comparative. BUT the adverb "differently" often does work with "than" and not with "from", such as in "he collects his data differently than I do". Yes, you can say " ... differently from the way I do" but why bother? The meaning is clear ... as it is anytime someone uses "different than". But I still think that always sounds wrong. So if anyone cares, my advice is to use "different from" as often as possible. You'll find it almost always works just as well as you think the "than" version does -- better than, in fact.

dissect

Most people pronounce this to rhyme with "bisect", but notice: "dissect" has TWO esses, not one. The syllables split BETWEEN the esses, thus the word consists of a prefix, "dis", meaning "apart"; and a verb stem, "sect", meaning cut: hence the meaning "cut apart". Other words starting with "dis-" include dismember, disassociate, distinguish, and disfavor, NONE of which are pronounced beginnig with "die-". It's only because of the similarity to "bisect" that this bothersome pronunciation has come into being, and so we have yet another way that Americans can make themselves sound ignorant. In fact, it's been pronounced "die-sect" for so long that the pronunciation is listed in my dictionary as an alternate. But that doesn't make it right.

drowned/drownded

One might assume that "drownded" is just a kid's mistake like "gived" or "thinked", but it's not that simple. "Drownded" is the past tense of "drownd" which is a valid dialectal variant of the verb "drown". It exists in the Carter Family song lyrics for Little Moses: "The Jews safely crossed while Pharaoh's host was drownded in the water and lost." Possibly this was originally a rhyming error: "grounded", "sounded" and "founded" are correct and standard; but it's been around so long in these dialects that they must be considered correct for them. So if you hear a tobacco farmer use "drownded", don't assume he's ignorant: in fact he's talking correctly for his dialect and you are the one ignorant of its rules. But if you hear a kid from a rich northern neighborhood use it, it's probably because the kid hasn't learned yet that it's different from "grounded" and you might want to teach it to them.

ect. ect.

This is not a typo: too many people write it that way for them to know it's a mistake. It should be "etc.", and it stands for the Latin phrase "et cetera". It doesn't help that many people pronounce this "eck settera", and that probably causes them to spell it wrong. It was a black day in education when the decision makers removed Latin as a part of the core curriculum of grade school. And by the way, in standard use (as a substitute for "and so on"), "etc." is always preceded by a comma. And preferably a space after the comma.

either is or either are?

"Either" and "neither", when used as pronouns, are singular. "Neither of us is at fault" is CORRECT. "Either Jack or Jill is at fault" is CORRECT. People are using the plural verb forms in these instances now: "neither of us are going"; but it makes no sense and sounds stupid -- and is INCORRECT.

eminent vs. imminent (vs. immanent)

These are not interchangeable. "Imminent" means "about to happen" (imminent danger); "eminent" means "famous and respected" (an eminent physicist) or "possessing a positive quality" (she has eminent qualifications for the task); immanent means either "inherent" (the protection of liberties is immanent in constitutional arrangements) or "permanently pervading and sustaining the universe" (as in an omnipresent supreme being). So get them right. If you speak in a dialect that makes them sound the same, at least learn to spell them right.

enquire or inquire?

"Enquire" is British; "inquire" is American. Ditto for enquiry and inquiry; but oddly there is no "enquest": "inquest" is used on both sides of the pond.

To err is human

This is a pronunciation issue. The word "error" has a root in the verb "err". Though everyone starts "error" with the same "e" as in "bed" (i.e. with an open "e"), "err" is often pronounced the same as "air" (i.e. with a closed "e" which is NOT equivalent to "ee" but more akin to the short "i" in "bit"). This is incorrect. There are two accepted pronunciations: the simple "rr" sound (American, not British, unless you ARE British), or an open "e" followed by the "rr" sound. But the open "e" is absent from the prevalent American accent, a.k.a. Newscasterese or the "Midwestern" accent (though that is a dialect family ranging from Ohioese to Minnesotaese), having been replaced (along with certain instances of "a") by the closed "e", so that the three words "Mary, marry, merry" all sound exactly the same. Northeasterners like me pronounce these three differently: I dislike IPA so I won't use it here; but "Mary" has the "a" ("ai") of "chair", "marry" has the "a" of "cat" (still much brigther in Midwesternese but nevertheless distinct from "marry"), and "merry" has the "e" of "bed".

This little word "err" has the same problem. If you don't want to risk being thought of as erring in pronunciation because your accent doesn't distinguish between these three sounds, then just pronounce it "rr".

Every day/everyday

These are two things that shouldn't be confused or used interchangeably, but they are. I'm just going to define them here.

"Every day" is an ADVERBIAL PHRASE describing something that happens not just today or tomorrow but on each day for the defined time period.

"Everyday" is an ADJECTIVE meaning ordinary, normal, or average.

Expiry or expiration?

The word "expiry" has begun popping up more frequently in the USA. I learned it in Canada: it's equivalent to the American "expiration" and is one of those words that non-American actors should learn if they don't want to sound wrong when playing American roles. Honestly, I don't understand why there isn't more policing of American English, both words and pronunciations, in TV shows and movies made abroad for American markets. Some actors, such as Mel Gibson and Hugo Weaving, can do passable American accents, but most cannot without some help. What would it cost to have an American proofread the scripts to weed out things like "diary" instead of "datebook", "you lot" instead of "you all" or "you guys", or "isn't it" instead of "you know"; and coach the actors so they stop pronouncing words like "civilization" and "organization" with the "-iz-" part pronounced to rhyme with "size", since Americans pronounce it to rhyme with "is"? (These words aren't even spelled the same in British: "civilisation", etc.) Apparently it would cost too much, and apparently the American actors made to say these lines don't care enough or are too afraid to speak up about it.

Parkade

This is a Canadian word that is so much better than the clunky American "parking garage" that I wish more Americans would start using it. That's all. Canadian English isn't just about learning how properly to use the word "eh", which is also much better that the American equivalents, such as "know what I'm sayin'?" or even "you know?"

PERmit vs perMIT

In the "standard" American dialect, there is a distinction in stress between certain verbs and nouns which are spelled identically. Here's a partial list:

These pairs all have one thing in common: the noun has the stress on the first syllable, the verb on the second. However, there are many pairs where the stress is the same:

And there are words where changing the stress of the same grammatical version of the word changes its meaning:

And then there's this fun little group, where the words are spelled the same but stressed differently, and are derived from different Latin roots, and one sounds just like yet another word, spelled differently, from yet another root:

Finally, there are word pairs, one half of which are now, in some dialects, being stressed oppositely from how they used to be stressed for the same meaning, and these stresses are replacing the older ones merely through frequency of use:

And here we come to my gripe. Obviously there is no rule about how to stress the words in these pairs; it's totally capricious. I put this here because I think distinguishing nouns from verbs of the same spelling by stress is simply cool, and I wish we would start doing the stress-distinction thing to pairs that don't have it, like "reVEAL" and "REveal", in the theatrical sense of the word; and STOP undoing it to words like perMIT/PERmit.

Also, I hope obviously, I'm not talking here about words in the same grammatical category, without counterparts in the other category, that are stressed differently for different meanings, e.g. "offense". "ofFENSE" means nonphysical violence toward someone, umbrage, or in battle lingo the noun meaning the attacking side; "OFfense" is a football term stressed that way to distinguish it from "DEfense" which is different from "deFENSE" which refers to any defense outside of football. But now, thanks to this invention of the Football People, we can use "OFfense" and "DEfense" outside football either in other games for the same meaning, or to make a reference to the game in situations outside the context of the game, for humorous or other purposes outside the meaning of the words themselves, and this is one of the things that make English great.

persuade vs. convince

See convince vs persuade.

this is a real phenomena

"Phenomena" is the PLURAL form of "phenomenON". It's Greek. See "data" for more.

protruberance

This is NOT CORRECT. The word "proTUberance" does not come from "protrude", but from late Latin protuberant meaning "swelling out", and so the word is "protuberance". Just think of potatoes. Tubers. Pro-tuber-ance.

he's an internationally renown operatic tenor?

No, he's an illiterate, internationally renownED operatic tenor. "Renown" is not the past tense of "renow", it is a NOUN meaning "fame"; it doesn't come from "know" but from French renomer meaning "make famous" from French nom "name". But because of the four letters in a row that it shares with "known", I can see the reason for the error, or more likely the assumption made in ignorance of the facts, and the fact that people don't pay attention to how things are spelled. Or for you Brits, spelt, which is also a cousin of wheat. PAY ATTENTION, or the renown you garner might not be what you want to be known for.

she and I

See "... and I".

taut or taught?

This is strictly a spelling issue as these two words are homophones. "Taut" means "stretched tight"; "taught" is the past participle of the verb "teach" which I trust needs no definition. THESE ARE NOT INTERCHANGEABLE, EVER, AT ALL, IN ANY WAY.

to boldly go

This is just the most famous American example of a supposed grammatical error, which is not in fact an error but seems like one, due to an odd feature of the English verbal system. That feature is that when talking about a verb we use the word "to" to introduce the verb in question, probably originally to avoid confusion between using the verb as a subject for discussion and using it as the grammatical verb in a clause. For instance, from "Hamlet": "To be or not to be, that is the question. It seems that you can't use "be" as a subject without putting "to" in front of it, but there are several other places one uses the infinitive form, and for clarity I'll stick with "be" because it still retains several forms whereas most English verbs have almost no formal variation anymore. One example is modal verbs, such as "can" or "must" or "should", which take the infinitive of some verb after them to complete the meaning, even if the other verb is only implied. (Confusion also enters here with the English construction "have to" which exactly equals the meaning of "must" but is much more common, and has the word "to" in it.) In English we don't say "can it to be true?" and we don't say "can it is true?" We say, "can it be true?" Therefore, "be" all by itself IS the infinitive. The term used to describe the function of "to" in "to be or not to be" is APPURTENANCE. "To" is an appurtenance to the infinitive. So give the person who wrote the preamble to every Star Trek episode a rest. "To boldly go where no one has gone before" is CORRECT. Some might deem it stylistically awkward, but that's different from incorrectness. And by the next example I hope to demonstrate the fallacy of thinking insertion of adverbs between "to" and its infinitive is always undesirable: "He's not going just to comply." This is NOT equivalent to "he won't simply comply", it's equivalent to "he's not going THERE simply to comply". Many times you can put the adverb after the supposed infinitive, but not here: "He's not going to comply just" makes no sense. If you substitute "simply" for "just" in this sentence-- "he's not going to comply simply"-- the meaning changes from simply complying (meaning complying without conditions) to complying in a simple manner (meaning complying in a certain way, with certain "simple" affectations such as words chosen, or little or no movement). We're splitting hairs here, but the goal of language-- whether it's achievable or not-- is clarity of meaning. Now, yes, we can say "he's not simply going to comply" but we run into the same danger as with "he's not just going to comply", and colloquially we use "just" more often than "simply" in constructions like this -- at least I do. (Other uses of "simply" would digress from the example, which uses "just".) So by saying "he's not going to just comply" we are not only not splitting a fictional infinitive, we are also communicating an idea that "he" will most likely be against complying. If we say "he won't just comply", we introduce an even more definite idea of unwillingness than "he's not going to just comply", which has as its implied complement "he'll need some convincing". "He's just not going to comply" implies certainty that he won't comply.