by Beth Sederstrom | Feb 13, 2019 | Commonly Confused Words, GrammarSpot
Muhammad Ali vs. Joe Frazier. The Boston Red Sox vs. The New York Yankees. Like vs. such as. Some battles are just legendary. Others are about grammar, so let’s make this syntax showdown quick and painless, OK?My husband hates it when I say “like.”...
by Amber Morris | Jul 28, 2016 | Commonly Confused Words, GrammarSpot
If there is one absolute in life, it is this: the English language is ridiculous. The guidelines often seem so arbitrarily set that I have no doubt that grammar trolls designed the rulebooks with the sole intention of tripping us up. I picture them hunkering down in...
by Carly Palacios | Jul 14, 2016 | Commonly Confused Words, GrammarSpot
Allusion vs. illusion can often cause confusion because these words not only sound very similar when spoken, they are almost identically spelled in writing. However, they refer to two very different things, which makes mixing them up in a blog post or essay all the...
by Amber Morris | Jun 13, 2016 | Commonly Confused Words, GrammarSpot
If I said that I feel badly, would you tell me to eat a cup of chicken noodle soup and rest, or would you wonder why my sense of touch is messed up? The bad vs. badly misunderstanding is persistent, so let’s make sense of these commonly confused words. Bad vs. Badly...
by Julia Brabant | Jun 6, 2016 | Commonly Confused Words, GrammarSpot
“Because you’re standing close by, can you close the door to my clothes closet?” OK, so maybe this isn’t a line you’re going to find yourself uttering on a regular basis, but it does give you a sense of why clothes and close are sometimes confused or otherwise used in...
by Carly Palacios | May 19, 2016 | Commonly Confused Words, GrammarSpot
Once upon a time in a land far away, I was a high school English teacher. When reading essays, I saw many instances of students mixing up homophones in their writing. Homophones can be especially difficult to differentiate between in your writing, because while in the...
