by baldy

Created on: July 31, 2008   Last Updated: August 13, 2008

ONLY YOU CAN PREVENT THE USE OF INCORRECT WORDS

The occasional, common mistakes we English-speaking peoples make in the choices of the words we use in our speech and employ in our writing are eminently avoidable. The errors are due to laziness. We refuse to expend the mental effort required to learn our own language and its wonderful nuances.

EXAMPLES OF COLLOQUIAL vs CORRECT USAGE

The vernacular usage of many English words and phrases, in both speech and writing, is frequently at odds with their correct usage. A broad review of these contradictions would prove prohibitively lengthy, but a brief citation of some of the most common word choice errors may help to improve your speech and your writing.

The commonly used phrase "the reason is because" is a spoken, colloquial use of the correct phrase "the reason is that". Read this again to yourself until you feel comfortable using the proper phrase.

Another error is the use of the noun "access" as a verb in a phrase such as "you can access your money from an ATM". If one changes the phrase to "you can get access to your money from an ATM", the mistake is corrected. Nearly everyone we know makes this mistake at one time or another.

The words "accurate" and "precise" are used interchangeably in everyday speech despite the fact that they have two different meanings. Precise measurements, for example, are those which are consistently reproduced. The numbers you derive from precise measurements have only a slight error which is based on the scale against which the measurement was taken. An accurate measurement, on the other hand, is close to the actual value that is being measured. A Fahrenheit thermometer placed in a pot of boiling water at sea level produces an accurate measurement if the mercury reads 212 degrees Farenheit. A dozen inaccurate measurements of 101 degrees have a high precision because they are consistently reproduced!

"Substitute with" does not mean the same as "replace with" and should not be used as such. The phrase "substitute for" is the correct phrase.

The incorrect use of "who" and "whom" pervades colloquial English like no other mistake. Simply said, "who" is always used as the subject of a clause or a sentence, and "whom" as the object. For example, the two sentences "Who is in the basement?" and "Whom did you see in the basement?" demonstrate the correct use of the two words.

CONNOTATION

Mistakes are also made with the flavor of word choices due to connotative differences among synonyms.

The political speech writer may feel that the use of the word "prosperity" would effectively convey a politician's meaning to the constituency, but it is difficult for an audience to visualize an intangible concept like prosperity. An alternative choice could be the word "abundance". Its visual connotation is of great quantity, such as one sees in pictures of an autumnal cornucopia overflowing with the fruits of the harvest.

A Congressman may very well appreciate being referred to as a "statesman" instead of a "politician". After a woman loses weight she might react more favorably to being called "slender" rather than "skinny". In both examples, each pair of words has one with a more flattering connotation.

Finally, keyword writers all too often fall victim to the carelessness of slothful haste in their pursuit of pennies. They frequently make poor choices in the words which they use, as they attempt to rework extant online articles and submit them as their own for profit.

This article made use of the following three sources:
http://www.wsu.edu/~brians/errors/errors.txt
http://www.theadvocates.org/communicating/word-choic e.html
http://homeworktips.about.com/od/homeworkhelp/ a/whom.htm

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