Tag Archives: learning

I’m going to be honest here. I have only ever seen prerequisite written perquisite when the writer clearly meant the former. And I didn’t actually know what a perquisite was until I looked it up when I sat down to write this post. But just in case you ever need to know … here you go!

A prerequisite, which is the word I really feel most people will be looking for and using out of this pair, is a thing which is required or necessary as a prior condition to something else. So a prerequisite for working as a French teacher is the ability to speak French.  A prerequisite for being a proofreader is being able to spell. Oh, and it’s one word: no hyphen.

A perquisite, it turns out, is a special right or privilege that you enjoy as a result of  your position.  I would say a perquisite of being a freelancer is the ability to wear pyjamas all day, but I don’t think that’s what it’s really about: it’ll be something to do with those special rights to walk your sheep over London Bridge or some such. If anyone reading this actually HAS a perquisite, I’d love to know!

Stop press: My clever friend Jen pointed out – rightly – that the word perk comes from perquisite. A perk is a benefit to which one is entitled to as an employee (or shareholder) of a company and, by extension, a benefit or advantage that comes from a particular situation. I still miss my borrowing perks from when I worked at the library. Interestingly, the dictionary says that this is an abbreviation dating from the 19th century. Thanks, Jen!

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

Today’s troublesome pair is perspective and prospective. Why do I think these two get mixed up? Because they are longish words that are spelled very similarly!

The main meaning of perspective is the art of representing three-dimensional reality on a two-dimensional surface to give an impression of objects’ relative distance and size (a classic example of this is painting a picture of a tiled floor; an example of using this for amusing means is found when you take a photo that you have the Pyramids in your hand, or similar) and by extension it means the appearance of objects with regard to their relative position and distance from the person viewing them. Other meanings, which you can see are linked to this idea, include a particular way of viewing things (“from the rioters’ perspective, they had every right to take the trainers”), and an understanding of the relative importance of things (“you need to keep a sense of perspective about what he has done: stealing a tube of Polos is not as bad as mass murder”).

Prospective, more simply, means likely or expected to happen or be in the future – “I’d like to welcome my prospective son-in-law into the family – he will marry my daughter in September”; “with my prospective earnings for 2012, I will be able to retire in 2050”.

“From Mrs Brown’s perspective, having a prospective neighbour who was good at picking locks was a godsend, as she was always losing her front door key.”

So the meanings should not be that easily mixed up; it just requires a moment of pause, perhaps, before writing down the particular word you choose.

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

Cue and queue. I’ve been meaning to write about this one for ages, as I see it quite a lot, most frequently in popular culture and the media, in newspapers and magazines and personal communications like Facebook updates, Tweets and blog posts.

This is another of those homophone issues – i.e. the two words sound the same, so if you have only ever heard them, rather than having seen them written down, or particularly if you have only seen one of them written down, an assumption can be made about which spelling / word to use. I think I have seen each used incorrectly an equal number of times; is that your experience?

So, a cue (as well as being something used to play snooker and billiards, which I don’t think gets into this particular issue) was originally a signal to an actor or other performer to begin their speech or performance. This meaning has been extended to include anything that initiates or reminds one of the start of an action or speech. So an actor takes  his cue from the end of the previous actor’s speech, or their actions, while I might take my cue to speak from the person I’m speaking with pausing, or at a seminar, from the chair pointing to me, or a company might take its cue to deliver a new software application from the release of a hardware upgrade.  It’s all to do with getting some kind of indication that it’s time for some kind of action.

A queue is more, if you like, about INaction – as it is a line of people or vehicles, etc., waiting their turn to proceed or be attended to. The line of people at the bus stop or outside a gig, or the cars waiting to cross a level crossing while the gates are closed.

If you are hanging around waiting to buy a train ticket before the ticket office is opened, you might take your cue from the staff member opening their hatch to start a queue for tickets.

So: a cue initiates action, and a queue waits for it. Does that make sense?

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

Recently, I’ve seen sentences along the lines of “this will reassure you and give you piece of mind”, so I think it’s time for us to have a look at this troublesome pair: peace and piece. They come with two related phrases. Well, phrases that are related to each word, but actually mean very different things: “peace of mind” and “a piece of [someone’s] mind” and this is possibly how the two have come to get mixed up.

Peace means tranquillity, freedom from disturbance, and, most importantly, freedom from or the cessation of war or other conflict. “After the war, came peace”. “Peace of mind” means reassurance, tranquillity, knowledge that all is well. So good house and contents insurance or saving up some money to live on if you lose your job is likely to give you peace of mind.

A piece is a little bit of something. A piece of cake; a piece of the action. And to give someone a piece of your mind is to rebuke them or tell them off. A  bit different from the peace of mind in the first example!

So, if I give you a piece of my mind (grrr) then you might well be lacking in peace of mind for a while!

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

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.