SHOULD OF. Change it to –> Should have. Come on, you know that’s just being lazy, right?
IRREGARDLESS. Change it to –> Regardless
ANOTHER THING COMING. Change it to –> Think ‘If you think I’m going to hike over to your place and pick up pizza on the way, when I could just as well sit at home binge-watching Netflix, you’ve got another think coming.’
PEAK/PEEK MY INTEREST. Change it to –> Pique, meaning to rouse or provoke.
FINE TOOTHCOMB. Change it to –> Fine-tooth comb. I think this one is self-explanatory, but I always enjoy hearing this mistake and getting that fleeting image of someone combing their teeth with a tiny little comb.
LESS. Change it to –> Fewer, as in ‘There are fewer interesting TV shows on Netflix during the summer.’ ‘Less’ would mean something different here, as in ‘There are less-interesting TV shows on Netflix during the summer.’ In other contexts however, I think we should just accept the shift from fewer to less. It really doesn’t bother me to hear or read ‘There are less apples in this basket than in that one.’ It’s a fact that this change is happening. English is an evolving language, and that is part of its beauty. So sometimes we have to sit back, observe the evolution and enjoy the ride. Regardless.
I. Change it to –> Me. Whether to say ‘I’ or ‘me’ can be tricky. It’s not always right to say ‘I’. So it should be: ‘He invited my husband and me to come over for pizza.’ Hint: remove ‘my husband’ and you’re left with the correct sentence ‘He invited me to come over for pizza.’ I’m not sure how my husband would feel about this invitation (my husband and I usually prefer to go out together), but the sentence would be right.
EVERYDAY/EVERYONE/SOMETIME. Change it to –> Every day/every one/some time. It’s not always right to turn words like these from two words into one. It changes the meaning. Every day I’d like to eat everyday things like bread (and pizza). But sometimes I don’t, when I reflect that I’ll need to diet for some time to make up for it.
WHICH/THAT – These are often used interchangeably, but they shouldn’t be. It’s all about essential messages versus nice-to-have, add-on messages. ‘Which’ introduces a nice-to-have message that is not essential to the sentence. ‘That’ introduces a phrase that is essential to the meaning of the sentence.
‘My last cup of coffee, which I drank at a Parisian café, tasted delicious.’ This means that the last cup of coffee I drank tasted great.
‘The last cup of coffee that I drank at the bus station was disgusting.’ This means that, of the four cups of coffee I drank at the bus station, the last one tasted awful.
I use this little mantra as a reminder: ‘That is essential, which is nice.’
SUPPOSABLY –> Supposedly. ‘Supposably’ is an actual word, but it doesn’t mean what people most likely want to say when they use it. It means ‘capable of being conceived of’ or ‘possible to suppose’. ‘Supposedly’ means ‘allegedly’.
So you could say, ‘Supposably, global warming could result in many coastal cities being wiped out. Supposedly, sea levels are rising even faster than predicted.’ In normal usage, that ‘supposably’ would most likely be replaced by ‘Conceivably’.
UNDOUBTABLY –> Undoubtedly. Similarly, people tend to get this wrong, although ‘undoubtably’ may be right in some cases. ‘Undoubtably’ means ‘not capable of being doubted’, or ‘it cannot be doubted’. ‘Undoubtedly’ ‘means ‘not questioned or doubted by anyone’. So, Paris is undoubtably the capital of France and undoubtedly a beautiful city.
I could finish with a complicated disclaimer about having no affiliation with Netflix (or Paris, for that matter), but right now I really couldn’t be asked!
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