Category Archives: Errors

This is a bit of a funny one, to be honest, but someone asked me to do a post on it, and I do try to help!  So what is the difference between a customer and a client – or, indeed, is there one?

Again, thanks to my Oxford resources for helping me work this through – examples are my own.

According to the Concise Oxford English dictionary …

A “client” is a person who uses the services of a professional organisation or person.

A “customer” is a person who buys goods or services from a shop or business.

So, really, a customer buys things and a client buys services …  I suppose a good way to differentiate it is: a client is NOT someone who buys an apple from a greengrocer, and you could buy an accounting software package from an accountant as a customer, but most people would say you’d still be their client for their services (even though the dictionary suggests otherwise); if you were just buying the package, you’d be a customer of their re-selling arm.  As clear as mud?

Maybe we should just stick with: customers for goods; clients for services.  Using the dictionary selectively but not going against it. I call the people I work for clients, by the way.

And an added bonus: “clientele” is the collective set of clients!

For more troublesome pairs, have a look at the category cloud to your lower right, or click here!

I was asked to differentiate this one by a friend who sent me a lovely long list of troublesome pairs.  But this is a simple one: either will do!

“Spelt” is the past tense / past participle of “spell”.  So is “spelled”. Apparently, “spelt” is more usually found in British English.

So there you go!

For more troublesome pairs, click to the right in the category cloud or click here.

This is an easy one with an interesting explanation.

Would have is correct.

Would of is not correct.

However, “would of” has crept into the language because when “would have” is abbreviated to “would’ve”, and spoken out loud, it sounds like “would of”.

“She would have gone out, but she didn’t have anything to wear.”

“She would’ve gone out, but she didn’t have anything to wear.”

This works throughout the range of words – “might have”, “would have”, “should have”, etc.

For more troublesome pairs, choose the category from the cloud over to your right, or click here.

Another potentially troublesome word pair: “lead” and “led”.

Here, we’re only talking about the sense involved in taking someone or something from one place to another, not the soft metal that’s made into roofing, the thing that connects your computer to your printer, or the thing that connects your hand to your dog …

This is quite a simple one: lead is the present tense, and led is the past tense.

So, we can differentiate thus: “lead” is used in the present, including when we’re requesting something at this moment: “Lead us not into temptation” – “Every morning, I lead the cows into the field and I still do that now”.

Contrast this with use of the past tense: “Every morning last July, I led the cows into the field, but that was in my old job and I do something different now” –  “He led me into temptation”.

“I’ll lead the horse today; you led him yesterday”.

If you want to see more pairs of words, click on the “Troublesome pairs” link in the category cloud to the right of this page …

Welcome to the first of my weekly mini-posts on troublesome pairs of words.  Keep on suggesting new pairs on the comments to my original post!

So, today it’s affect and effect.

Quite a simple one – if you AFFECT something, it means you have an EFFECT on it.

Well, not quite that simple …

Affect is (mainly) a verb, which means “to have an effect on”, or to “make a difference to.”  Effect is used mainly as a noun, the difference that is created when something is affected.  It’s an end result or consequence.

Although you can also “Effect a change in something”, this is a different verb used in a different way.  And an affect is also used in other senses, such as to denote pretending or as a precise term in psychology, but we won’t worry too much about those uses, as they’re not the ones that tend to get mixed up.

Examples:

Bill’s injury affected his ability to play in the team, and had a bad effect on the team’s morale.

Bill affected the morale of the team when he got injured.  The effect was to make them play less well.

I will affect the balance of this blog between grammar and opinions when I post all these mini-posts.

When used in combination with another drug, this drug can affect the side-effects in a positive way.

The effect of the water on the runner was marvellous; he perked up immediately.

Sarah effected a change in the way the meetings were structured.

Thanks as usual to the Concise Oxford English Dictionary and New Hart’s Rules for helping back me up!