Category Archives: Language use

The stationery / stationary pair mix-up is one I see a lot.  It’s an easy one to get wrong, but hopefully an easy one to get right (or else just bookmark all these troublesome pair posts, I suppose!).   If it comes to it, learn “stationery” as I’m fairly sure I see that more often than “stationary”, on the grounds that if you know one of them, you can work out the other one.  Or something.  Anyway, here we go:

Stationary – not moving, still.  “The traffic was stationary”

Stationery – writing materials.  “My wedding stationery has a pink theme”; “Have you done the office stationery order yet?”

“The stationery truck is caught in stationary traffic and we have no more notepads until it gets here!”

You can find more troublesome pairs here.

This explanation of this particular troublesome pair is very definitely confined to British English.  I will write something about the differences between British and American English on this blog at some stage.  But this one is strictly English.

Again, this can be explained quite simply, although people seem to get in rather a state about it all.  Maybe everyone’s bookmarking these posts so they don’t have to get in a state any more!

Practice is the noun – football practice, Best Practice, these dodgy practices have to stop.

Practise is the verb – Ben is practising his football techniques.  I need to practise making up good examples.  The GP practised handstands in the practice waiting room.

To sum it up in one go: Ben went to football practice to practise his goal-keeping skills.

You can find more troublesome pairs here.

And here we are with another troublesome pair that’s been requested by one of the Libro blog readers.  This one relates somewhat to good old fewer vs. less, in that you have fewer of a number but less of an amount.  Basically, an amount is uncountable, while a number is countable.

An “amount” is a total of something, whether it’s a number, a value, an extent or a size.  An amount can be of several countable things all added up together, or, more usually, of one of those uncountable, collective nouns we talked about in the “fewer or less” post.

A “number” is an arithmetic value, represented by a symbol, word or figure.  And it refers to the countables – hairs, rabbits, coins, sheep …

“He owed me three sheep, £2 and an acre of land, and paid the full amount.”

To hark back to the fewer and less post: A large amount of hair; a large number of hairs.  A small amount of coinage, a small number of coins.  A small number of sheep eating a large amount of grass.

Here’s an interesting side note:

“The number of” + a plural noun is used with a singular verb: “The number of children who can read is lower at age 5.”

“A number of” + a plural noun is used with a plural verb: “A number of children remain unable to read later on.”

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

One of the biggies, here: fewer or less? Many people, including a good friend of mine, get absolutely incensed when these are used incorrectly (leading to the spectacle of several well-educated, intelligent ladies self-correcting nervously when they make a slip in front of her: she probably doesn’t warrant this fear any more than I warrant the fear people apparently have of making a typo in a response to this blog!)

Anyway, it’s quite simple …

Fewer is used for countables.  Less is used for mass nouns denoting things that can’t be counted – uncountables.

So – it should be “5 items or fewer” on that supermarket checkout sign.  Less coinage has been produced this year, but there are fewer coins.  Less hair has been cut off this time, but I have fewer grey hairs than he does.

The Concise Oxford English Dictionary is reassuringly stern on this one: “The use of less with a count noun (“less people”) is incorrect in standard English.”  That’s told you!

You can find more troublesome pairs here.

As with most of these pairs, this idea came from one of my readers: how to distinguish between relative and relation.  Well, basically, it’s a subtle one!

I looked these ones up in the Oxford Concise English dictionary. Relative is defined as “considered in relation or in proportion to something else”.

Relation is defined as the way in which two or more people or things are connected or related.

I see this as relative being about a comparison, and relation about a similarity.

So, you can say, “the relation between rain and snow is that they are both wet and cold; relative to snow, rain is wetter but less cold”.

As regards the other main meaning, a relative is a person connected to another by marriage or blood (I’d add or adoption or arrangement there to cover adoptions, step-families, etc.) and a relation is defined simply as “a relative”. Your sister is your relation, and also your relative.

Always nice to have some subtlety on a Monday …

You can find more troublesome pairs here.

I’m going through the replies to my original post asking for troublesome pairs people want me to explain.  I’ll try to cover them all in the fullness of time, so watch this space!

This feels like quite an obscure one, but I’ve been asked, so I’ll answer!

Your lineage is your ancestry or pedigree.

Linage is the number of written or printed lines.

In the spirit of trying to write at least one example that uses both of the words discussed in the post: “How much linage do you need to write out the Earl’s lineage?”

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

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!