In before the buzzer! Or before the clock strikes midnight and my carriage turns back into a pumpkin? Whatever. It’s still Monday here for a few more minutes so I’m going to make a post!
Happy Tuesday! Well, by the time most of you read this, it’ll be Wednesday or later because it’s evening here in California. I have a good excuse: I had braces applied today and I had a doctor appointment, on top of the usual work and activities.
Because of that, today’s entry will be short and simple. In fact, I came across these typos while reading a short news article during my daughter’s nap. This article is about a 500 kg woman named Eman Ahmed who was flown to India for weight loss surgery. Here’s a link to the original article.
Happy Monday, friends! For today’s Malapropism Monday I have just a short one — mixing up “prescribe” and “proscribe.” This is one I’ve seen online and in TV closed captioning, and it’s one that spell checkers won’t catch because they’re both real words. The problem is, they have vastly different — almost opposite — meanings.
Happy Monday, everyone! Well, for most of us in the US it may not be the happiest of Mondays due to the “spring forward” daylight saving time that stole an hour of our sleep this weekend!
Personally, I do enjoy having more daylight in the summer, but the clock change in the spring is tough, isn’t it? Even getting the hour back in the fall doesn’t work out so well when you have young kids as I do. Somehow their little bodies don’t get the message that we can all sleep in longer.
It’s Monday again! Exciting, right? For today’s Malapropism Monday I’d like to bring up yet another writing and speech pattern that bugs me! I know you’re dying to find out about it.
Today’s topic is the use of “try and ____” vs. “try to ____.” Did you know that these are not interchangeable? People often say “try and ____” when they should say “try to ____.” Or, at least in my opinion, they should…
Happy Tuesday evening! It’s time for another edition of Typo Tuesday. For this week’s entry, I’d like to present some screenshots from companies that offer proofreading and editing services. Yes, that’s correct.
I have well over a decade of experience copyediting and proofreading for two companies as well as even more experience helping out friends and family, but I haven’t done much freelance work for individuals I don’t know already. The freelance work I have done was paid hourly, but it seems that a lot of clients prefer to pay by the word or by the page. I wanted to do some research on what other freelance proofreaders charge when they charge by the unit rather than by the hour.
What I found was… interesting. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again that even proofreaders need proofreaders, and I’m sure there will eventually be errors on Lee the Linguist (if there aren’t already). However, I was rather shocked by how often I found errors on websites selling proofreading services, and even more surprisingly, on the pages where they stress the importance of having your work proofread!
It’s Monday again! You know what that means, right? I still have some malapropisms left on my list, so I’ll continue with this series a while longer.
Today I wanted to focus on the use and misuse of “compliment” and “complement.” This is a pair of words that people mix up all the time, in my experience. In fact, I mentioned it in my recent post on TokyoTreat snack subscription boxes. Here’s a screenshot from their (overall enjoyable and well-done) magazine that comes in the box:
It’s a bit late here for today’s Malapropism Monday post due to today being Presidents Day — in the AP writing style there is no apostrophe — here in the US.
Today’s malapropism will be a short and quick one, because I’m tired after wrangling a couple of kids through the rain. Speaking of tiredness have you ever seen “weary” written in place of “wary”? I do all the time. People will say things such as, “I’m really weary of the new policies at work — I don’t think they’ll have a positive effect on absenteeism.” It’s not likely that you can be weary of a new policy, right? Weary means tired or fatigued. I suppose it’s possible, but not very likely.
The more apropos word in that situation would be “wary,” which means “watchful, cautious, or alert” according to Dictionary.com. It’s also possible that you could mean to say you’re “leery” of a policy, since leery means “suspicious” and is a synonym of “wary.” You could say I’m weary of seeing this error and wary whenever I see the word “weary,” and I’m leery of the misuse of these words!
Anyway, the reason my post is late today is because my family and I went to San Francisco since we all had the day off of work and school. We’ve only lived in the Bay Area for a few months, so there’s still a lot we haven’t seen here. There was rain all day long, so we didn’t spend as much time outside walking as we would have liked to, but we had lunch at the Hard Rock Cafe (a family favorite anywhere in the world we can find one) followed by some walking around Pier 39 and a bit of driving tourism.
Here are a few photos from today:
Bonjour, mes amis! French is by far my weakest language, though I use it every day for my work! I’m able to do that because in my job I never have to speak French, and I only rarely have to write it. When I do write it, I don’t have to write long, complex passages of prose, but rather short phrases and sentences.
That said, I do read French pretty well as long as the topic is something common enough and not too full of specialized jargon. My short time of formal French study combined with my strong Spanish skills and a decent amount of independent study have made French enjoyable enough for me that I do want to continue learning more. (more…)
First of all, do you know what a “malapropism” is? It’s the misuse of a word, often similar in sound to the apropos word, which changes the meaning of the sentence to something ridiculous. See what I did there? I used the word “apropos,” which means “appropriate” or “pertinent.” The Read more…