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Category Archives: Errors

Viscus or viscous?

05 Apr
Viscus or viscous?

I do like a -us or -ous distinction that’s not just talking about American versus British English, and, well, enjoyed wouldn’t be quite the right term, would it, did some writing about this when I covered mucus or mucous. So here’s another pair of words that sound and are spelled almost the same but don’t mean the same, and you wouldn’t really want to mix them up, would you!

Viscus, it turns out (I didn’t know this off the top of my head. One of the most important rules of being an editor is know when to look things up, and I always check even the ones I think I know in several resources before posting these articles) – is the singular form of the word viscera (which is the word for the internal organs, particularly those in the abdomen).

Viscous describes the state between being a liquid and being a solid: a thick stickiness. Ugh. When I did a search to make sure I hadn’t written about this before, the results came up with my mucus or mucous and unguent or ungulant articles. I think I’ll write about something sere and dry and non-sticky next …

You can find more troublesome pairs here, and here’s the index to them all!

 
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Posted by on April 5, 2017 in Errors, Language use

 

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Possum or opossum?

01 Apr

DictionariesBecause possums are known for playing dead, I thought this would be a good post for April Fool’s Day. But I’m posting this after midday in the UK, so it’s only still appropriate in later timezones than ours. Ah, well.

So, what’s the difference between opossums and possums? Well … there is and there isn’t a difference.

An opossum is an North American marsupial which is from the family Didelphidae and is handily also sometimes known as a possum. The word opossum was borrowed from the Powhatan language in the 1600s.

When Americans or those who knew the opossum first went to Australia, they found there was a similar-looking BUT NOT THE SAME animal from the Phalangeriformes family, and promptly christened it the possum. Except that it’s sometimes called an opossum.

Here’s the North American type, the opossum (or possum) (both pictures used from Wikipedia  on creatives commons licences):

North American opossum

and here’s the Australasian variant, the possum (or opossum):

Australasian possum

You’re welcome!

You can find more troublesome pairs here and the index to them all so far is here.

 
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Posted by on April 1, 2017 in Errors, Language use, Troublesome pairs, Writing

 

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Stentorious or stertorous (or stentorous)?

25 Mar
Stentorious or stertorous (or stentorous)?

This troublesome pair originated from the common misconception that there is such a word as stentorous, which is something to do with loud speaking or breathing. I’ve seen and heard this used, but in fact, it’s not a word at all! The word people are looking for there is stentorious, and the word they are probably being affected by when they think about it is stertorous.

Let’s sort out these two words that do actually exist, then.

Stentorious (or, indeed stentorian, which is listed in the Oxford Concise Dictionary at the expense of stentorious, but I reckon I’ve never come across) is used to describe a person’s voice, or the sound they emit, as being loud and powerful. Stentorious and stentorian are both listed in the Oxford Dictionaries online resource (which you can find here). I suppose stentorian might be marginally easier to spell, but in this case it seems a bit odd to have two words meaning exactly the same, even though I usually like that kind of thing.

Stertorous sounds pretty similar AND means a pretty similar (though not exactly matching) thing – it describes laboured and noisy breathing. I do like this distinction and think it’s important.

So stentorious or stentorian for vocal expression, stertorous for breathing, and stentorous for neither of them, because it doesn’t exist (but I bet a lot of people look it up!.

Do comment if you found this article because you looked up stentorous! Thank you!

You can find more troublesome pairs here, and here’s the index to them all!

 
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Posted by on March 25, 2017 in Errors, Language use

 

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Undulate or ungulate?

15 Mar

My husband, Mr Libro, likes these words, he suggested last week’s too. I have to say I agree with him, too, even if any confusion between them in likely to be more of a typo than an error in meaning.

To undulate means to move smoothly in a wave-like manner.

An ungulate is a hoofed mammal, such as a cow. I thought it only meant hoofed animals that chew the cud, so you really do learn a new thing every day!

You can find more troublesome pairs here, and here’s the index to them all!

 
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Posted by on March 15, 2017 in Errors, Language use, Troublesome pairs, Writing

 

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Undulant or unguent?

01 Mar

This is a Troublesome Pair suggested by Mr Libro, my dear husband. I’m not sure anyone will get these mixed up, but they are fun words, aren’t they? A bit of a tongue-twister, too …

Undulant is a second adjective that originates from undulate (the more common adjective is undulating, but why have one adjective when you can have two lovely unusual ones?). So it means something that is undulating, or moving with a smooth, wave-like action.

An unguent, which is a noun, is a soft and viscous or greasy substance which is used either for lubrication or as an ointment.

So now you know.

You can find more troublesome pairs here, and here’s the index to them all!

 
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Posted by on March 1, 2017 in Errors, Language use, Troublesome pairs, Writing

 

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Mucus or mucous?

22 Feb

I haven’t posted a Troublesome Pair for ages but I’ve had this one up my sleeve (erm, no, I haven’t, that would be disgusting!) for ages and hadn’t got round to posting it. With a Birmingham Cough going the rounds still, this seemed a seasonal post; my apologies to the more sensitive reader. It is a valid and troublesome pair, though!

Mucus is the noun, i.e. the thing itself: slimy stuff that gets secreted by animals and even plants (it’s more commonly known as mucilage in plants, though mucilage is also, in general a viscous bodily fluid or secretion).

Mucous is the adjective – so mucous membranes secrete mucus, for example.

Bonus word: mucilaginous is the adjective that goes with mucilage. I bet you’re glad you asked, aren’t you!

You can find more troublesome pairs here, and here’s the index to them all!

 
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Posted by on February 22, 2017 in Errors, Language use, Troublesome pairs, Writing

 

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Warn or worn?

11 Feb

DictionariesThis one was suggested by my friend Linda quite a long time ago; I have revived these Troublesome Pairs posts yet again, so watch out for some good ones coming up over the next few weeks.

This is a tricky one for those who get vowels mixed up; often people coming to English from a language that doesn’t mark vowels in the same way, such as Arabic, can get caught out by all our very similar words, especially when they sound almost the same.

To warn, a verb, means to alert someone about something which is about to happen, usually bad. You can issue a warning (the noun) or be warning (verb) someone about the problem.

Worn is the past tense of wear OR an adjective arising from it, and both words have two meanings: to have on the body, as in clothes (I will wear a hat today) or to do with erosion and damage through constant use or friction, etc. (the water of the river has worn through the rock to make a valley; I have an old, worn book that has been damaged by years of use).

You can find more troublesome pairs here and the index to them all so far is here.

 
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Posted by on February 11, 2017 in Errors, Language use, Troublesome pairs, Writing

 

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I closed Windows Explorer and now I can’t see my task bar: how do I get it back?

11 Jan

This was a question that arose for me the other day. I was trying to rename a file in the folder view of Windows Explorer and everything froze. I opened Task Manager (see my article on Task Manager if this is new to you) using control-alt-delete, selected Windows Explorer and clicked End Task. To my horror, what I now know is called the “Shell” – the explorer view but also the lower task bar and my desktop, the clock, the Windows button – all disappeared. How would I get it back?

windows explorer shell has disappeared

My poor sad monitor view with no desktop, Windows button, bottom task bar, clock, etc.

How do I restore a closed app using Task Manager?

Just as you can use Task Manager to close an app or piece of software that’s frozen, you can use it to restore, too.

Open Task Manager using the Start button or Control-Alt-Delete and click the File tab (note, this is Windows 10, so yours might look a bit different, but it will have the same features that we’re talking about here).

If you haven’t previously used Windows 10 Task Manager, you will need to expand it from the initial view:

small

Click More details and you’ll see the full view:

Task manager open new app

Select Run new task. You will then see this dialogue box:

task manager run new task

Type “Explorer” (or whatever else you can’t find) in the Open field and then press OK (Don’t worry about the admin privileges bit at the moment: you would know if you needed to use that).

And now all of the Windows Explorer Shell has reappeared:

Windows explorer shell has reappeared

In this article, I’ve shown you how to make Windows Explorer (or any other app or software you have made disappear) reappear when you’ve accidentally closed Windows Explorer and your desktop icons and task bar have disappeared.

Related posts on this blog

How to close down an unresponsive program using Task Manager

 
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Posted by on January 11, 2017 in Computers, Errors, Short cuts, Windows

 

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Why are my tracked changes altering their colour when I save in Word 2010, 2013 and 2016

05 Oct

We’ve already learned what Track Changes is, why we use it and where to find it, and how to customise Track Changes to suit our own preferences and learned how to work with a document that has Tracked Changes.

This article explains what to do when your tracked changes alter their colour when you press the Save button. It’s weird, it can be annoying, and your initials might disappear, too, which can be confusing if more than one person is commenting on the text.

Screen shots are from Word 2013.

Has your track changes markup ever changed colour?

This has only happened to me when working with a document that has originated from someone else.

You have made lots of changes in a document, and they show up in red, as normal (or whatever colour you have set for your corrections), but when you save, yours go into blue and your initials disappear. This might also happen if you’re working on a document which already includes someone else’s tracked changes: yours show in a different colour to theirs until you press Save. Then they’re all blue (or whatever colour the first person’s were).

What is happening here?

The original owner of the document has specified that the personal information of whoever is working on the document will be removed when they Save the document.

How to check whether your personal information is being removed upon Saving the document

To check whether this is the reason for your tracked changes changing colour, follow these steps.

Go to File (the extreme left tab in Word) and Options:

word options for checking trust center

Clicking on Options will give you this Word Options menu; choose Trust Center:

accessing the trust center in word

Click on Trust Center and then go into Trust Center Settings by clicking the button at the bottom right:

Trust Center in word

Once in the Trust Center Settings, you need to go into Privacy Options (it will default to Macro Settings):

Privacy settings in trust center in word

…. and once you have accessed Privacy Options, you will see that Remove personal information from file properties on save is ticked, which means that when you save, all references to your name are removed from both track changes and the properties of the file itself:

remove personal identification on save in word

Now, at this point, this can be “unticked” so that your changes stay in your colour (in your own view, only, of course) and with your initials (everywhere). But do stop to think: did the person who created the document do this on purpose? It’s quite a lot of clicks to make by accident, so I do tend to check this, see why it’s happening and then leave it as it is. I might change it so I can see my own changes then make a note to change it back before my final save, but in general, I leave it.

Why might someone choose to remove personal information in a document?

I’m not entirely sure that I have an answer to this. Maybe they have edited the document and don’t want their end client to be confused by lots of different names on the file. Maybe they’re a student who wants to make sure no one else’s name is on the file. I do tend to assume they have a reason, and respect that.

But this is how and why the tracked changes colour sometimes changes when you save your document.

This article has taught you how to work with a document that has been marked up using Track Changes where the colour of the track changes alters. You can read more about what Track Changes is and why we use it, how to work with a document including tracked changes and how to customise Track Changes.

If you have found this article useful, please share or “like” it using the buttons below, or leave me a comment to tell me what you think. Thank you!

This is part of my series on how to avoid time-consuming “short cuts” and use Word in the right way to maximise your time and improve the look of your documents.

Please note, these hints work with versions of Microsoft Word currently in use – Word 2010, 2013 and 2016 all for PC. Mac compatible versions of Word should have similar options. Always save a copy of your document before manipulating it. I bear no responsibility for any pickles you might get yourself into!

Relevant articles on this website

Track changes 1 – why use it, where can you find it, what can you do with it?

Track changes 2 – customising Track Changes

Track changes 3 – working with a document with tracked changes

How do I accept one reviewer’s changes?

 

 
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Posted by on October 5, 2016 in Copyediting, Errors, New skills, Short cuts, Word, Writing

 

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Medalling, podiuming and singular they

17 Aug
Of course this isn't exactly what "medalling" means

Of course this isn’t exactly what “medalling” means

Languages change. If languages didn’t change, we’d be speaking like Chaucer, British and American English would be identical, or we’d still be using words like “chairman”, “crippled”, “omnibus” and all sorts. We also wouldn’t have a way to describe “selfies”, “Brexit” or “omnishambles”.

The verbs formed from nouns, “medalling” and “podiuming” have been heard again recently, as they are every four years in an event whose name is controlled so closely you’re not supposed to go around mentioning it in blog posts. Lots of people have been complaining about these, saying it’s an erosion of the English language, etc., etc.

Now, I’m one for making sure we retain two words with a close but not identical meaning in order to be able to distinguish between different concepts or things. But in this case, it’s not taking away the distinction between two different things, it’s just adding another word to say the same thing. And we form words in all sorts of ways – by blending, shortening, lengthening them and shifting the part of speech they belong to. Once, we weren’t even allowed to start sentences with and or but …

The other wordy thing I wanted to mention briefly was singular they. This is something editors and other wordy people are still arguing – quite bitterly – about. “They” used to be used just as a plural. But, just as we’ve removed words like chairman and dustman from the language to cover the fact that different genders of people do different jobs, over recent years there’s been an acceptance that binary genders – the idea that everyone is either “he” or “she”, has joined up with a common dislike of the clumsiness of using “he” and “she” in alternate chapters or “he/she”, “s/he”, etc. to promote the use of singular “they”, i.e. the use of “they” to refer to one person in the singular. An example would be, “When someone gets to the front of the queue, they should go to the first available window”.

Now, some people rail against this change, but I think that it can be made to work grammatically, it gets rid of clumsiness and it doesn’t exclude people to whom, for whatever reason, it’s not appropriate to refer using binary gender wording. This is standard in my editing, although I’d never make this kind of change without consultation if it appeared more than very sporadically.

I’m not expecting to change anyone’s mind here; I’m just setting out my stall. These are my personal opinions, but these are interesting topics to think about and they’ve been at the front of my mind recently. Thank you for reading!

I generally talk about word stuff in my Troublesome Pairs posts which do distinguish meanings between pairs or triplets of words. Have a look at the index here!

 
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Posted by on August 17, 2016 in Be careful, Errors, Ethics, Writing

 

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