Common_Errors_in_English_usage

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There is another sort of question in which "whom" appears later in the sentence: "I wonder whom he bribed to get the contract?" This may seem at first similar to the previous example, but here "whom" is not the subject of any verb in the sentence; rather it is part of the noun clause which itself is the object of the verb "wonder." Here an old genderbiased but effective test for "whom" can be used. Try rewriting the sentence using "he" or "him." Clearly "He bribed he" is incorrect; you would say "he bribed him." Where "him" is the proper word in the paraphrased sentence, use "whom." Instances in which the direct object appears at the beginning of a sentence are tricky because we are used to having subjects in that position and are strongly tempted to use "who": "Whomever Susan admired most was likely to get the job." (Test: "She admired him." Right?) Where things get really messy is in statements in which the object or subject status of the pronoun is not immediately obvious. Example: "The police gave tickets to whoever had parked in front of the fire hydrant." The object of the preposition "to" is the entire noun clause, "whoever had parked in front of the fire hydrant," but "whoever" is the subject of that clause, the subject of the verb "had parked." Here's a case where the temptation to use "whomever" should be resisted. Confused? Just try the "he or him" test, and if it's still not clear, go with "who." You'll bother fewer people and have a fair chance of being right. WHOLEHARDILY/WHOLEHEARTEDLY If you want to convey your hearty congratulations to someone, you do so not "wholehardily" but "wholeheartedly"with your whole heart. A WHOLE 'NOTHER/A COMPLETELY DIFFERENT It is one thing to use the expression "a whole 'nother" as a consciously slangy phrase suggesting rustic charm and a completely different matter to use it mistakenly. The "A" at the beginning of the phrase is the common article "a" but is here treated as if it were simultaneously the first letter of "another," interrupted by "whole." WHO'S EVER/WHOEVER'S In speech people sometimes try to treat the word "whoever" as two words when it's used in the possessive form: "Whoseever delicious plums those were in the refrigerator, I ate them." Occasionally it's even misspelled as "whoseever." The standard form is "whoever's," as in "Whoever's plums those were. . . ." WILE AWAY/WHILE AWAY "Waiting for my physical at the doctor's office, I whiled away the time reading the dessert recipes in an old copy of Gourmet magazine." The expression "while away the time" is the only surviving context for a very old use of "while" as a verb meaning "to spend time." Many people
substitute "wile," but to wile people is to lure or trick them into doing somethingquite different from simply idling away the time. Even though dictionaries accept "wile away" as an alternative, it makes more sense to stick with the original expression. WISE In political and business jargon it is common to append "wise" to nouns to create novel adverbs: "Revenuewise, last quarter was a disaster." Critics of language are united in objecting to this pattern, and it is often used in fiction to satirize less than eloquent speakers. WITHIN/AMONG "Within" means literally "inside of," but when you want to compare similarities or differences between things you may need "among" instead. It's not "There are some entertaining movies within the current releases," but "among the current releases." But you can use "within" by rewriting the sentence to lump the movies together into a single entity: "There are some entertaining movies within the current batch of releases." A batch is a single thing, and the individual films that make it up are within it. WOMAN/WOMEN The singular "woman" probably gets mixed up with the plural "women" because although both are spelled with an O in the first syllable, only the pronunciation of the O really differentiates them. Just remember that this word is treated no differently than "man" (one person) and "men" (more than one person). A woman is a womannever a women. WONT/WONT People often leave the apostrophe out of "won't," meaning "will not." "Wont" is a completely different and rarely used word meaning "habitual custom." Perhaps people are reluctant to believe this is aq contraction because it doesn't make obvious sense like "cannot" being contracted to "can't." The Oxford English Dictionary suggests that "won't" is a contraction of a nonstandard form: "woll not." WORLD WIDE WEB "World Wide Web" is a name that needs to be capitalized, like "Internet." It is made up of Web pages and Web sites (or, less formally, Websites). WORSE COMES TO WORSE/WORST COMES TO WORST The traditional idiom is "if worst comes to worst." The modern variation "worse comes to worst" is a little more logical. "Worse comes to worse" is just a mistake. WOULD HAVE/HAD
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Common Errors in English by Paul Br
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But you made a mistake yourself! We
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ABSORBTION/ABSORPTION Although it's
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ACCURATE/PRECISE In ordinary usage,
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ADVOCATE FOR/ADVOCATE When they are
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as believers do not need to be able
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captivity. There is no such word as
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(notice, no "N") and "auteur" (in f
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with each other. Your greatgrandm
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"This pizza is really expensive
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ARTIC/ARCTIC Although some brand na
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To "assure" a person of something i
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AVENGE/REVENGE When you try to get
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concealing. It seems more likely th
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long this had been the custom and w
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the last word to "pail." The area o
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past tense of "bear": "My brother's
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"Breech" however, refers to rear en
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Side note: Britons laughed themselv
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weather, so we shouldn't be surpris
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not cast in stone." They may be inf
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lounge), resulting in the mispronun
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You cite the author in an endnote;
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trouble with commas if they deal wi
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CONCENSUS/CONSENSUS You might suppo
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COME WITH In some American dialects
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More on COULD CARE LESS" People who
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There are several words with Latin
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it just a goofy typo? DAMP SQUID/DA
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with short deadlines but not da
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degree" and "doctor of philosophy d
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substituting "do" for "due" (owing)
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established, if unusual. However, t
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applied to plans and activities, no
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Latin phrase exempli gratia. When y
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"burned/burnt" and "kneeled/knelt."
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You can pronounce the last two syll
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Originally these two words were syn
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An epigraph is a brief quotation us
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But when something happens only occ
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Something grows exponentially when
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Unfortunately, Star Trek has confus
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FIRSTABLE/FIRST OF ALL The odd word
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fortunate chance event. It is nonst
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FORBIDDING/FOREBODING/FORMIDABLE "F
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popularly as "Frankenstein's monste
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FUSHIA/FUCHSIA The flowers known as
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When "God" is the name of a god, as
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There are just two syllables in "gr
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safer using "disability" than "hand
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Heal is what you do when you get be
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A simple test is to substitute "us"
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HONE IN/HOME IN You home in on a ta
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(theoretically the width of a lette
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are expressing their own ignorance.
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of vague ways, often clumsily. Here
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"infamy." Humorists have for a coup
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INTERCESSION/INTERSESSION In theolo
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down to earth. Similarly in standar
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In electronics, a jack is a female
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JUDGEMENT/JUDGMENT In Great Britain
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might lead people to think of relax
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the standard spelling for those lit
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or "It feels like spring." In expre
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are less common now. LOGON/VISIT Yo
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spell his title with a double "L."
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MEDIOCRE Although some dictionaries
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AB "minus" 231. In the model name "
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"motherload" is a mistake which is
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people want to vomit, and it temper
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hilariously mistaken "nip it in the
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is singular, is the subject. If you
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OLDTIMER'S DISEASE/ALZHEIMER'S DI
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lose a shirt. Strictly speaking, "I
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ORIENTATE/ORIENT Although it is sta
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Some people derive the noun "paraly
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in the apartment." PAST TIME/PASTIM
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to "you peoples" indicated illitera
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PHANTOM/FATHOM Brianna exclaims con
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PLAYS A FACTOR/PLAYS A ROLE Some pe
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US from Hawaii. POPULACE/POPULOUS T
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part of a team. Don't write "preM
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law or doctrine: "The workers fough
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PUNDINT/PUNDIT "Pundit" is one of t
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quoted words and phrases within quo
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wrecked. If things are wrecked, the
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Page 232 and 233: they mean to say they're healthy. F
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Page 244 and 245: end justifies the meaning enervate
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Page 254 and 255: language. Try one of them instead.
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Common_Errors_in_English_usage

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