Category Archives: Writing

I saw the word coruscating and its misuse being discussed on a forum to which I belong, and I suddenly realised that the word people had been confusing it with was excoriating. Cue a Troublesome Pair!  Two quite difficult words, but we’re up for them, aren’t we!

To coruscate means to flash or sparkle, so coruscating wit is sparkling wit. Because people only have a vague idea that it has something to do with wit, they seem to have changed its meaning to be something harsher, almost a flaying kind of idea, and I’ve heard this a few times myself, but, for example, criticism can’t be coruscating – it means sparkling, nothing to do with harshness, ripping to shreds, etc.

To excoriate, however, does mean to criticise severely, so although it’s a bit of a tautology (saying the same thing twice in one phrase), you can have excoriating criticism. And, excitingly for my half-remembered meaning of difficult words, it has a medical sense meaning to damage or remove part of the skin!

So, now you know. Go on: use one of them in your conversation today!

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

I have seen several instances of weather being used for whether recently, so it’s worth setting these down just in case.

Weather as a noun is the state of the atmosphere at a certain time and place – sunny, windy, snowing, hot, cold, etc. To weather (the verb) is to change in appearance or form through long exposure to the weather (more commonly: to be weathered).

Under the weather means unwell or depressed – you’re metaphorically under a cloud of unwellness, I suppose!

Whether is a conjunction expressing …

• a choice between two alternatives – “I can’t decide whether to go to the cinema or the park”
• a doubt, either expressing a question or investigation – “I don’t know whether keeping this hat I’ve found is the right thing to do” / “He will check whether she lost a hat”
• an indication that a statement is true, whichever of the alternatives mentioned is the case “I will go to the cinema whether they’re showing a western or a thriller”

Of course, the two can always be found together: “I’ll go out, whether the weather is sunny or wet”, but hopefully you know the difference now!

Edited to add – my friend, Ian Braisby, just reminded me that a wether is a castrated sheep! So now you know …

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

I come across site and sight being mixed up quite a lot, and citing is on my mind as it’s dissertation editing season at the moment … so here goes with this troublesome trio!

Let’s get the easy one out of the way first. To cite is to refer to – you might cite a reference in a document, or use the word to refer to something that has come before, usually a precedent: “to cite precedent, we have let a man into our women’s tennis club before, and so we will have to do so again”.

A site is the place where something is located, whether that’s the piece of land where something is built or the location where something happens. To site something is to place it in the location where it is going to stay or take place.

Sight is the power or faculty of seeing, as well as the more metaphorical extensions like foresight, where you are not physically seeing something, but perceiving something in the future. A sight is something that you see.

When you see the sights, you are, literally, seeing them with your sight. Therefore they are sights, not sites.

But sites can also be sights that a sightseer would view! “The main sights of the trip are the sites of the Pyramids and army encampments”. We see the touristic sights, but they are all sited somewhere.

If it’s a feature, phenomenon or building, etc.,  that you see, it’s a sight. If it’s the place where that thing is situated, it’s the site of that thing. And if you refer to an essay about the phenomenon, you might cite it!

“Jeremy cited the newspaper article about the argument over the site for the new ‘see the sights of the world’ exhibition in his report on the controversy”.

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

This is one that came up in something I was editing a few days ago. And, I admit, one that I had to check in the dictionary. I was pretty sure the writer wanted unmeasurable (I was right), and I wasn’t sure that immeasurable was a word (I learned something, notably that SpellChecker doesn’t think it’s a word, which is why we still use dictionaries!).

Unmeasurable means, specifically not able to be measured objectively. We use this one in the literal sense: “the immense lizard was unmeasurable with the tiny ruler in the standard lizard measuring kit”; “the sea trench in which the angler fish lived was of an unmeasurable depth”.

Immeasurable means, a bit less specifically, I suppose, too large, extensive or extreme to measure. We should reserve this one for the more figurative sense (otherwise there’s no point in having two different words, is there, and where would THAT leave us?): ” the immeasurable mercy of their god”; “he had immeasurable ambition”.

“I experienced immeasurable relief when I discovered that the width of the lake, filling and evaporating as it did, was actually unmeasurable.”

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

Here is a pair of words that are often used in reports and academic work; they do have a subtle difference which it’s worth noting and remembering.

To affect something is to have any effect on it, to make a difference (remember the difference between affect and effect).

To have an impact (on) something means to have a strong effect on it (of course, an impact also occurs when something comes forcibly into contact with something else – in a collision or wedged and crushing like an impacted wisdom tooth).

So everything that has an impact on something has an effect on it, affects it, but not everything that affects something else has a strong enough effect to be an impact.

We also have the tricky issue of the phrasal verb impact on – “low interest rates have impacted on saving”. People tend not to like new phrasal verbs, and this one is seen as business jargon. If you’re tempted to use “have impacted on”, try “have had an impact on” instead: you know you’re safe with that one

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

This one was suggested to me by my friend and fellow freelancer, Lyndsey Michaels, and is, indeed, an important one.

Of course, these two are linked, and formed from the verb to pass. And they are easy to confuse and HARD to explain! But that doesn’t mean that they shouldn’t be used correctly …

Passed is a verb and is the past tense of pass. It expresses the idea that something has gone by something else, or that anything that passes anything else has done so in the past tense. “She had passed the elephant house and was on her way to the penguins”; “Many years had passed, and he was an old man with only his memories of pandas to sustain him”.

If you can use the word “pass” in the present tense, the future tense, or use it in the form passing, etc., i.e. if you’re using it as a verb, a “doing” word, when you’re using one of the past tenses, or a conditional, you can use passed:

I will pass my driving test one day – when I have passed my driving test I will get a car – if I had passed my driving test, I would have been so happy –  I have passed my driving test.

I am passing the jeering pub-goers with pride: after all, I’m running and they’re not – I passed the jeering pub-goers with pride – I will have passed the pub-goers in five minutes, and then I can relax.

Time will pass and all will be better – Time passed and all was better

Contrast this with past:

Past can be a noun meaning the time that has come before – “my divorce is in the past now, and I’m moving on!”. It can be an adjective – “Past prime ministers gathered for the Royal Wedding” meaning gone by in time and no longer existing. It is also a preposition meaning on the other side of “You can see him over there, past the crazy golf but in front of the candyfloss seller”. And it can be an adverb with a meaning of “so as to go by or so as to pass – “The ball went past the goalkeeper and the Mexican team scored”.

If something has passed something else, it has gone past it. It hasn’t past the other thing, and it hasn’t gone passed it.

So past doesn’t change when it’s used in the future, present past in a conditional sense, etc.: it works as a noun, an adjective, an adverb or a preposition and as an adjective, adverb or preposition will be found alongside a verb, rather than BEING a verb.

I went past the pub – I am going past the pub – I have gone past the pub – I will go past the pub – time will go past – the driving test was in the past – the driving test was in the past – the ball will go past the goalkeeper – the ball went past the goalkeeper – the ball was going past the goalkeeper.

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

Are they escaping or are you referring to them? That’s an odd sentence, but it’s what you need to consider when you’re choosing between these two words. They are used in different ways, too, which helps!

To elude means to escape from or evade, usually in some kind of skilful or cunning way (this can be concrete or abstract – “The moth eluded me and flew out of the window”; “The meaning of his ideas eluded me”). Note that elude has one l and something eludes something else.

To allude to something means to hint at it indirectly, or mention it in passing: “When discussing Betty he alluded to her plastic surgery but it was not the main part of the conversation”. “‘Ah, the majesty of your figure,’ said Adrian. ‘Are you alluding to my boob job?’ shrieked Betty”. Note that it has a double l and someone alludes to something else. Also note that this is sometimes used mistakenly in place of refer. You can’t say “He alluded to the actress by her name”, as to allude is to be indirect. Here you would use “He referred to the actress by her name”. Save allude for a use such as, “He alluded to the actress, mentioning an infamous role she played earlier in her career but not naming her”.

And to illude (has anyone ever used this?) means to trick or delude. But it’s hard to see when either of those words wouldn’t do, and it saves you remembering this one. I am just including it for the sake of completeness, to be honest. It is important when it comes to the word formed from it, illusive, though …

A bonus section today …

If something (language, on the whole) is allusive, it means it uses suggestion (yes, alluding to something) rather than mentioning something explicitly. “The poet uses allusive language to describe the pile of droppings without mentioning what it actually is”.

If something is elusive, it is difficult to achieve, find, catch, etc. It aims to elude the person who is trying to catch it. “The moth proved elusive, as I chased it around the bathroom, and it escaped through the window”.

If something is illusive, it is illusory and deceptive – it’s main purpose is to illude. “His wealth was illusive – all fur coats on top, all cheapo clothes underneath” (wealth can be elusive, of course, too, if you can never manage to achieve it, but the meaning is different).

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