Pitfalls
Below is a far-from-exhaustive selection of common pitfalls and problems.
Possessives
Possessives are usually easy:
- The book that Tom owns
- Tom’s book
we just attach -’s to show ownership. A common problem is that when something is owned by ‘it’ there’s no apostrophe: the possessive in this case is “its”. This is far too often confused with “it’s”, the contraction of ‘it is’ as in “It’s my party”.
Two other aspects of English use of the possessive are worth noting, and often cause problems. One is the case of the gerund, essentially a verb behaving rather like a noun. Gerunds always take the possessive:
- The offer was conditional on my accepting it that day.
Another common error with possessives is in missing them out when talking about periods of time:
- The financial year ends in four weeks’ time.
but, of course:
- My holiday entitlement is five weeks.
Less and Fewer
The supermarket sign that says ‘Ten items or Less’ is wrong. If you can count something, it’s ‘fewer’.
- Fewer sunny days; less sunshine.
- Fewer sad thoughts; less sadness.
But we are talking about English here, so you would expect a few exceptions to the rule. The most obvious ones are:
- Less than fifty pounds
- Less than ten minutes
Clearly, these things — minutes and pounds — can be counted, and though ‘fewer’ wouldn’t be wrong, ‘less’ is more natural.
Disinterested and Uninterested
These two words have very different meanings. Being disinterested is usually a good thing: it means not having your own agenda; being impartial. Being uninterested means not being bothered, or being bored.
- Magistrates hearing a case are required to be disinterested in the outcome. If they’re not, they must disqualify themselves.
- She was uninterested in the precise route: caring only that they arrived in one piece.
Frequently and Regularly
We all know exactly what these words mean, but they are often used carelessly, as if they both mean something like ‘often’. ‘Regularly’ conveys the idea of ‘occurring at similar intervals’, as do the words ‘weekly’ and ‘monthly’. “I go to the cinema regularly” says nothing about how often I go — I might go once every five years, always on May 4th: very regularly, but too infrequently for me to claim to be an Odeon-junkie.
Split Infinitives
Conventional wisdom will tell you that to say that the mission of the USS Enterprise in Star Trek was “to boldly go where no man has gone before” is wrong because the phrase splits the infinitive ‘to go’.
In fact, there is no good linguistic reason why an infinitive should not be split. The ‘rule’ came about because in Latin and Greek, infinitives are always single words, and so they cannot be split. This is not a good reason why they should not be split in modern English. There is, though, a better reason: people will think you are ignorant of this much-repeated and generally accepted ‘rule’. And since avoiding the split — and the offence it causes — is easy, wherever you can, avoid it.
None
‘None’ is a contraction of ‘not one’. When you realise this, it’s clear that the verb it governs should take the singular form:
- None of us is going to the meeting.
‘None of us are ...’ is somehow easier on the ear, but it’s wrong.
Quality
As an adjective, ‘quality’ needs modifying to make sense.
- “We supply quality food.”
is meaningless: does the writer mean ‘high-quality food’ or ‘low-quality food’? ‘Quality food’ is about as helpful as ‘temperature day’: does this mean a warm or a cool one?
Discreet and Discrete
The first means something like ‘cautious and subtle’; the second, ‘separate and distinct’. The easy way to remember the right spelling is to note that in the word ‘discrete’, the “e”s are separated.
Functionality
A nonsense word: use ‘function’ instead.
Transportation
A nonsense word, unless you are referring to the practice of sending convicts to distant colonies. Use ‘transport’ instead.
Methodology
A nonsense word: use ‘method’ instead.
Incentivise
A nonsense word: use ‘incent’ instead. If ‘incentivise’ means anything, it could refer to adding an incentive to something, like an advertising campaign. But people are incented to do things.