Category Archives: Language use

I try to be understanding about all the different issues I see in my daily life as a proofreader and editor with eyes that can’t help catching things. Many of them, as I’ve described in this blog over the months, are explicable and understandable. But I have to admit that I have a bit of a block about this one, and I just can’t see how people manage to mix them up!

But I do see this one all over the place, and the Oxford Concise English Dictionary sees it necessary to have one of its special boxed comments distinguishing the two, so I’d better get on and differentiate them for you. I’ll be interested to see how many hits I get on this post from search engines – some of them are proving ever so popular! But maybe people don’t even realise there’s a distinction …

To peddle is to sell goods or promote ideas – so you can peddle the idea of a new innovation or practice – or of course you can sell goods door to door like a pedlar, which is where the word comes from originally.

A pedal, on the other hand, is an apparatus for making a bicycle move (or a similar human-powered machine like a pedalo or pedal-car), or an apparatus for making something happen, operated by the feet; thus car clutch and brake pedals or organ pedals. To pedal is to make a bike (or similar) move by applying pressure to its pedals.

Peddling – selling or promoting. Pedalling – moving oneself forward under one’s own steam on a bicycle or suchlike.

“Boris Johnson is peddling the idea of his hired bikes all over London – and you can literally get on a physical bike and pedal it all over London!”

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

I think that the confusion people make between of and off is a simple typing or sound one, as most people understand the difference between these two prepositions.

Of expresses a relationship between a part and a whole, “half of the pie”; a scale/measure and a value, “2 metres of fabric”; an association between two things, usually of belonging, “the sister of the man involved”; a direction and a point of reference, “East of the clock tower”; any other relationship, e.g. “half of you come from Outer Mongolia”, “you, the people of Outer Mongolia”, “Of all the countries in that area, Outer Mongolia is the largest”, “the dress is made of Outer Mongolian fabric”.

Off is used as an adverb or preposition and implies the opposite of a relationship – a separation: away from the place in question “off-site data storage”; so as to be removed or separated from, “the top of the bottle comes off for easy storage”; starting a journey or race, “they’re off!”; moving away and often down from, “she got off the horse”; removed or separated from, “he is now off the Mongolia project”; having a temporary dislike of, “I’ve gone off yoghurt again”; bad or spoiled, “this meat is off”.

So they’re quite different, and it’s just important to watch your typing when you’re using one or the other.

Interesting points 1 – it is incorrect to use of instead of have in constructions such as “I should have asked him the way to Ulan Bator” – see my post on would have or would of for why this happens.

Interesting points 2 – it is also incorrect to use off of instead of of – “I picked him up off of the floor and dumped him in a taxi” – but this was used in Shakespearean English and is found in American English usages (usually not formal written English, though).

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

This is a quick and easy one, but it’s been bothering me slightly recently that the two are getting mixed up when they are distinct things.

A blog is a whole entity, like Libroediting or Libro Full Time (why not plug my own two!) or, now I come to think of it, my book review blog (I’m just shameless, aren’t I!). It’s a collection of blog posts, or articles, like a book is a collection of chapters or a magazine or newspaper is a collection of articles. The container, if you like.

A blog post is one of those individual articles or chapters. It’s a piece of content that’s contained in the container of the blog. This is a blog post, and part of a blog.

I’m not sure where the confusion has crept in, but it has … so people say “I’ve written a new blog today” or “I’m writing one blog a week this week”, when of course they don’t mean that they’re starting up a whole new set of articles, a new container; they mean they’re writing a blog post. I thought for a while that it was all about getting things written in as short a space as possible – Twitter syndrome – but “I  have written a post about discrete vs. discreet” takes up the same room as “I have written a blog about discrete vs. discreet”, so it can’t  be that.

The act of writing and publishing blog posts is, of course, blogging. But you’re still writing blog posts in particular, or a blog in general.

Thank you for your attention to this matter! You’ll have to excuse me the odd, small rant: just trying to keep things accurate and descriptive and doing my bit to preserve the finer grain of our language.

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

Either or neither: a pair that many people seem to be confused about. So let’s sort this one out.

The main rule for this is quite simple, and there are some stylistic points, too.

The basic idea is that either is followed by or, and neither is followed by nor.

So, “Either we’ll go to the cafe or we’ll go to the pub”, “They went to neither the cafe nor the pub, but had a walk in the park, instead.”

It is incorrect to write: “They didn’t go to either the cafe nor the pub”, or “They went to neither the cafe or the pub”.  Quite simple: either … or and neither … nor.

Stylistically, both kinds of sentence need to be balanced: so you wouldn’t say “either we’ll go to the cafe or the pub” or “He neither saw himself as farmer or politician”.

Confusion also sometimes arises with the use of or/nor with no and any. “No people or pets were harmed during the filming”; “we did not harm any people or pets”, not “No people nor pets”; “any people nor pets”.

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

Definite and definitive obviously come from the same root, but they do have separate, differentiated meanings and I don’t think they should be allowed to blur into one another or swap meanings. We have these different words for a reason, and that reason is clarity. There’s getting to be a theme here, as I said a similar thing about refute and rebut, didn’t I!

Definite means clearly stated, decided – not doubtful or vague. It means clearly true or real, and as well as these more intangible meanings, it also means having exact and discernible physical limits. The definite article is “The”. “There is definite evidence that this pipe was not sealed properly”.

When something is definitive, it is done or reached with authority and decisively – and in extension, it refers to the most authoritative of its kind: usually a document or book. “We have found the definitive answer to the meaning of life”, “This is the definitive edition of Ms Broomfield’s great work”.

Oddly, a definitive stamp is one for general use, not commemorative or special. I did not know that.

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

This one is a bit delayed, as I remember all sorts of discussion about it around the time of the UK Riots in August 2011.  But it’s an interesting one, as things don’t always mean exactly what you think they do. So, burglary, robbery – and a little extra: theft.

Burglary is not, as people tend to think, stealing from a house. It actually refers very specifically to illegal entry into a building with the intent to commit a crime such as theft. This is why some of the rioters were convicted of burglary and people thought it was odd because it was a shop rather than a house that they were going in to. It’s similar to breaking and entering, which isn’t actually now a British legal term (according to the Concise Oxford – sue them, not me!) which is the crime of entering a building by force in order to commit burglary (remember, burglary just involves illegal entry, which doesn’t have to be forceful if, for example, you’ve stolen or copied a key).

Robbery is the action of stealing from a person or place, so you’d do a burglary in order to do a robbery, I suppose.

And our little bonus entry: theft is the action or crime of stealing.

Nice. Well, I was asked!

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

Rebut and refute are a bit like confound and confuse – closely related but still subtly different meanings. I was at a translators’ meetup at the weekend (linked to a website/community I use to get proofreading and localisation jobs) and we were talking about how there are often 2 words in English for one concept (often one Anglo-Saxon and one Romance) and there are also subtle shades of meaning expressed by slightly different words, which would need longer phrases in other languages. Anyway: rebut or refute?

Rebut something is to claim or prove to be false. It comes from an archaic sense of driving back or repelling, which gives it a subtle difference from refute.  When you rebut something, it’s a rebuttal. I prefer that word to refutation, for some reason.  Rebut comes from Anglo-Norman …

… whereas refute comes direct from the Latin. To refute is to prove a statement or the person advancing it to be wrong.  So it’s more a discussion than a direct refusal and shoving back, which is what rebut feels like to me. Refute is often used nowadays in the sense of denying a statement or accusation. However, this use is not accepted by traditionalists – it’s marked as being “disp.” (disputed) in my New Hart’s Rules, so we won’t go there!

So, two similar words, two similar concepts, two slightly different emphases or shades of meaning. This is what keeps English rich and creative and keep these pairs alive!

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

They used to just be a plural word, referring to a number of people and having the standard reflexive form of themselves – “There were many people in the queue. They were all told to help themselves from the buffet”.

But we are seeing more and more usage of they and them as a singular, to avoid clumsy uses of  he/she or him/her followed by himself/herself. Then, by extension from the him – himself or he – himself formation of the reflexive, people are starting to use themself as the reflexive. “If a child is confident, they may be able to help themself to water”.

This does seem to be sensible, and it’s something I think I’ve used myself (there’s another one!) in the past. However: no more! Because, having been asked about this via Twitter, I looked it up and found that actually themself is not regarded as “good English”. And we like good English on this blog, don’t we?

So the reflexive of singular they and them is themselves, and my above example should read: “If a child is confident, they may be able to help themselves to water”.

An easier one, I suppose, in that one is correct and one is incorrect – you don’t have to remember different usages, just not to use themself. Make that we don’t have to remember …

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

Counsellor and councillor are very commonly mixed up – you find them everywhere, from non-fiction books to blog posts and all points in between. I suppose both of them try to help people – but they are different words for different things, and they need to be kept separate and understood as such.

A councillor is someone who sits on a council. So, local councillors are those people we elect to sit on the city council and run bits of our lives for us. Oh yes, let’s not forget our capitalisation rules in all the excitement: Councillor Broomfield sits on Libroville City Council. She is a councillor who sits on a city council.

A counsellor is someone who provides help with personal problems. They give counsel, they counsel you. Maybe that’s the way to remember it, as you can’t council someone. Can you? You go for counselling with a counsellor (I have seen the two spellings being mixed up even in that context) and maybe that’s the way to remember it.

If anyone has any nifty ways to remember these differentiations, do post a comment!

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

Weary or wary seems to me to be an odd pair to mix up – sorry if you do this and don’t think it’s odd, but they just seem so different. Having said that, I do keep seeing them being mixed up, so this will probably be helpful!

I see weary being used where it should be wary more than the other way round; I have a feeling that perhaps a memory of leery is getting into it, and then the pronunciation means the writer goes for the word that sounds like leery. Who knows. Anyway, here we go:

Weary means tired. And to weary of something means to be reluctant to experience any more of it. “I’m weary, because I’ve worked 10 hours today” (this is not literally true, don’t worry!). “I’m weary of writing Troublesome Pairs posts and I don’t think I’ll do it any more” (this, also, is not true).

Wary means cautious about possible dangers or problems. It’s linked to beware, and maybe that will help people to remember it. “I’m wary of dogs after being bitten a few times”, “I’d  be wary of going down that dark alleyway if I were you.”

Let’s see if we can use the two in the same sentence … “She was weary of being wary, jumped into the middle of the pack of dogs … and got bitten.”

Sorry, dog lovers – please feel free to substitute any other biting animal in these sentences!

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