Category Archives: Troublesome pairs

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.

I’ve been working my way through the last of Gill’s massive list and this is one of the final ones … I have had some more suggestions here and there, though, so the supply won’t run out just yet!

So, today we have confound and confuse.

To confuse someone is to make them bewildered or perplexed – “He confused her with his rapier wit until she would agree to anything”.”1% fat or 99% fat-free? I’m confused”. In a linked way, it also means to make something less easy to understand – “He confused all the issues with each other until it was impossible to understand his arguments”. And it also means to identify wrongly – “Is that Busted? Oh – I’ve confused them with McFly.”

Now, confound does carry a meaning of to surprise or confuse,  but it’s more used in the sense of proving something wrong or causing it not to work, defeating a plan, a hope or an aim “Her hopes of living off her savings were confounded by the low interest rates”; “Ha! With my intelligence and wit, I have confounded your dastardly plot!” A useful and flexible word, it can also mean to mix up with something else: “in his formula, x is confounded with y, and that makes it come out wrong”.

Special bonus word: to confute – is to prove to be wrong (shall we do confute and refute next time?)

So, a simple rule – confuse if you want to perplex or mix up; confound if you want to ruin the dastardly plans. Got that?

“She was confused by the bright lights, and he confounded her plan for escape by tripping her up.”

That’s probably the last troublesome pair for 2011 – will anybody be on the internet reading blogs next Friday?

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

That, which or who? This is a set of words that I see used incorrectly all the time, especially using “that” instead of “who” (although there are a few debates, it’s normally quite clear). I’ve also been asked for help on that/which a number of times, and I have to admit that I wouldn’t have been able to reel off the rules without checking it. Of course, I do check all of these, even when I think I know the answer, just to make sure I’m giving you the correct information!

So, to start off, you can use that OR which if you are introducing clauses that define or identify something (the fancy name for these is “restrictive relative clauses”) and it doesn’t seem to matter which – it’s a question of style preferences or what feels better in the sentence (wouldn’t you know: another one without a proper rule!) So: “A book which aims to explain all human life”, “a book that aims to explain all human life”.

Which is officially used (instead of that) if the clause gives additional information. “The book, which costs £15, has sold 1000 copies”.

Although it’s not officially specified in my reference books, I would therefore use them like this:

– If you’re just saying what the book (or whatever) does in general, use that: “these are the books that will tell you about the stars”.

– If you’re explaining something in comparison with something else, use which: “This is the book which explains all human life, unlike this other one, which just explains about men”.  The way to remember this? “Which is which?”

Moving on to who, we use who when we’re talking about a person or something that’s personified such as a group of people or a named animal. “The man who said yes”, “The proofreaders, who were all a bit pernickity”, “Felix the cat, who was very naughty” (and possibly, “the cat, who was very naughty”, if it’s a specific cat, but “the cats that lived in the barn”, “the cat that I saw on my way to work, which was white with a grey tail … “).

Things do get a bit confusing when you get to a group of people, as a group is non-personified, but the people are – you can do it either way but someone will argue with you, whichever path you take (“The group of men who were going to the ball”, “The group of men that was going to the ball” – I prefer the former, personally. Remember to make the verb agree when you do this – it depends whether you’re referring to the singular group or the plural members of the group).

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