‘Brake’ and ‘break’

April 25, 2016Hannah McCall 1 Comment

I regularly see break and brake used incorrectly. They are homophones and it’s very easy to type the right letters in the wrong order.

Break has lots of meanings but I am going to list the core ones (I have also omitted brake’s rarer ones). If you would like a more extensive breakdown, you should visit Oxford Dictionaries online.

Brake

to make a moving vehicle slow down by using a brake
a device for stopping or slowing a vehicle
a thing that slows, hinders or stops progress, activity or momentum

Break

to separate or become separated into pieces
to damage or become damaged so as not to work
to cut through or penetrate
to interrupt
to fail to observe or to infringe
to crush emotional strength or resistance
to go through change or enter a new state
to suddenly become public
an interruption of continuity or uniformity
a pause in work or activity
a gap or opening
an opportunity or chance

Unfortunately, I don’t have a simple tip to help anyone who may struggle with using break and brake. If you have a suggestion, please share it in the comments!

Thank you to James J Harris for suggesting this post.

‘Dependant’ and ‘dependent’

April 20, 2016April 21, 2016Hannah McCall 5 Comments

The use of dependant and dependent is a very good example of the constant changes taking place in the English language. Fellow users of British English are probably aware of the traditional distinction.

Dependant

a person who depends on someone else for financial support

Dependent

requiring a person or thing for aid or support; unable to do without
[dependent on] conditioned, influenced or determined by; contingent on

However, you might be surprised to learn that you can also use the spelling dependent for the noun. Dependent has recently muscled its way to the status of a standard variant spelling of dependant; dependent is now as common as dependant in the Oxford English Corpus (according to Fowler’s and the Oxford Dictionary online).

Dependent was already the standard spelling in American English. And dependent is the only standard spelling for the adjective.

Psychopomp

April 15, 2016October 10, 2016Hannah McCall 3 Comments

This week’s interesting word may be familiar to Greek mythology and ancient history enthusiasts. It is usually applied to figures such as Charon, Hecate, Hermes, Apollo and Anubis.

A psychopomp is a mythical guide of souls to the place of the dead. It can also be a spiritual guide of a living person’s soul.

Psychopomp is pronounced just as you would expect (you can listen to it here). The word is derived from the Greek word psukhopompos meaning ‘conductor or guide of souls’ – psukhē means ‘soul’ and pompos means ‘conductor’. According to the OED, the first recorded usage was in 1603.

Psychopompal and psychopompous can be used as adjectives and psychopompically is the adverb:

“I, Hermes-like, am coming to fetch you psychopompically to Hell.”

– Rupert Brooke, The letters of Rupert Brooke (1968). 1908

If you have an interest in psychology, you might recognise psychopomp as the term Jung used for the anima or animus (the link between the true inner self and the unconscious).

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Source:

The Oxford English Dictionary Online

Capitalisation: family relationships

April 13, 2016April 13, 2016Hannah McCall 13 Comments

Writers are frequently confused about when to capitalise words such as mum and dad. It isn’t as complicated as it may seem. The general principles are as follows:

If you are using the word in place of their name, you should capitalise:

I'm cooking dinner for Mom
She asked Dad to mow the lawn
"Oh no," said Grandma

This applies if you are using the word as a title as part of their name:

We went to visit Uncle Gareth
"I've got things to do," said Grandpa Joe

If you are using the word as a label – a description of relationship or kinship – you should not capitalise:

I'm cooking dinner for my mom
Jenny's grandmother plays tennis
He looks just like his brother

You can usually tell if you need a capital letter by substituting a proper name and deciding if it sounds strange:

I told Mother the cat ran away 
I told Helen the cat ran away

I told my Mother the cat ran away
I told my Helen the cat ran away
I told my mother the cat ran away

This isn’t foolproof because people do say ‘my Helen’ or ‘our Helen’ to distinguish between multiple Helens or to imply relation. However, the use of a possessive pronoun (my, your, his, her, our or their) is often a good indicator that you should not capitalise.

This is my second post on capitalisation (the first one was on capitalising months and seasons), and it is an expanded answer to Erik Porter’s question about whether to capitalise mom in the phrase my mom. I hope it helps!

‘Accept’ and ‘except’

April 11, 2016April 11, 2016Hannah McCall 3 Comments

Accept and except sound very similar, and the similarity causes confusion for some writers. If you are one of them, don’t feel bad about it. Accept and except have been muddled up for centuries; Fowler’s states that Queen Elizabeth I made the error in one of her letters.

Accept:

to take or receive something offered
to agree to

Except:

not including; apart from
to leave out or exclude

My tip to help you use the correct word is to try to remember that accept means agree and both words begin with a.

Tellurian

April 8, 2016April 15, 2016Hannah McCall 6 Comments

This week’s interesting word is likely to be well known to lovers of science fiction.

Tellurian can be used as an adjective to mean ‘of, inhabiting or relating to the earth’. Readers, writers and watchers of science fiction will probably be familiar with the noun meaning ‘an inhabitant of the planet earth’.

Tellus (or tellur) is the Latin word for earth or ground. Tellus is also the name of the goddess of the earth in Roman mythology or a personified version of the earth (usually female).

Tellurian was used to refer to the earth in the late 18th century, as shown here:

"It will show the heliocentric position of the telurian orb." A Short Account of the Solar System, Bartholomew Burges. 1789.

Its use to mean ‘a person from the planet earth’ was established and flourishing in fiction by the mid 19th century. The text the following example is taken from is available to read on Google Books:

[Spoken by the Man in the Moon] "What monster have we here?—Away, Tellurian!" Blackwood's Magazine, May p555. 1828.

Source: The Oxford English Dictionary (online)

Capitalisation: months and seasons

April 6, 2016April 12, 2016Hannah McCall 6 Comments

I know some writers find it hard to use capital letters correctly; New Hart’s Rules has an introduction to capitalisation you might find reassuring:

Capital letters in English are used to punctuate sentences, to distinguish proper nouns from other words, for emphasis, and in headings and work titles. It is impossible to lay down absolute rules for all aspects of capitalisation … the capitalisation of a particular word will depend on its role in the sentence, and also to some extent on a writer’s personal taste or on the house style being followed.

The most important thing, I think, is to consider why you have used a capital letter – nouns don’t automatically need one.

There are some general principles you can use to guide you. The convention for months and seasons is fairly simple. I have included days and festivals below because they are often queried at the same time.

Days

The names of days are capitalised:

She was born on a Wednesday
Can I visit next Saturday?

Months

The names of months are capitalised:

The referendum will be held on 23 June 2016
I'm going on holiday in April

Seasons

The names of seasons are not capitalised:

I like to visit the beach in summer
There was a distinct lack of snow this winter

However, you should use a capital letter if you have personified the season:

And Winter shook his frosty mane
The warm sun ended Spring's slumber

Festivals and holidays:

The names of festivals, holy days and holidays are capitalised:

We are preparing for Ramadan
I don't like Halloween
What are you doing on May Day?

If you would like more information on using capitals, I recommend starting with Trask’s Guide to Punctuation. If you would like additional guidance, New Hart’s Rules is a useful style guide for UK publishing and is fairly thorough on the topic on capitalisation.

References:

New Hart’s rules: the handbook of style for writers and editors (2014) 2nd edn. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Trask, R. L. (1997) The Penguin guide to punctuation. London: Penguin Books.

‘Climactic’ and ‘climatic’

April 4, 2016Hannah McCall 2 Comments

The similar spelling here makes it so easy to use the wrong word, accidentally type the wrong word, or miss the incorrect usage when you are reading over your own work.

Climactic means ‘forming a climax’:

The viewers gasped during the climactic final fight scene
Mounting tension gave way to a climactic resolution

Climatic means ‘relating to climate or weather’:

My hair doesn’t react well to these climatic conditions
The researchers are worried about climatic change

My advice is to try to remember there is no extra c in climatic because climate does not have an extra c. Or there’s a more complicated association with climactic and cinema (because that’s where you often watch films with big climactic scenes).

Proofreading guide for students

April 2, 2016April 15, 2016Hannah McCall Leave a comment

Late last year I wrote and published a series of posts on proofreading advice. This is the first of those posts: Proofreading advice: take a break.

I have put a lot of that advice into a PDF guide that is now available on my Resources and Information for Students pages. You can also download it by clicking on the image opposite.

My 4-page guide has been written primarily for students. I enjoy working on dissertations and theses, but not all students can use the services of a proofreader. If you aren’t allowed to use professional help, or if money is tight, I hope this guide will be of some assistance.

It contains four steps to help you prepare for proofreading your own work, as well as a list of common errors to look out for. The common errors include mixed -ize/-ise endings, incorrect use of apostrophes, and references that aren’t according to style.

Authors may not find all of the advice relevant to them, but they will probably find some of the information of use.

‘Foul’ and ‘fowl’

March 28, 2016March 29, 2016Hannah McCall 8 Comments

Here’s a faintly seasonal mix-up with an accompanying adorable picture.

Foul

offensive, obscene or vulgar; unpleasant
foul smelling or dirty; full of dirt or offensive matter
evil, wicked or immoral
bad tempered, cross or irritable
unfair or dishonorable; against the rules of a sport
to make dirty or polluted; to spoil or damage
to come into conflict with (‘fall foul of’)

Fowl

a domesticated bird such as a chicken
a bird raised or kept for food, or hunted as game
the meat of fowl
a bird; a collective term for birds

Ducklings are fowl and not foul. (Although, like all baby things, they are full of offensive matter that will go everywhere. And it stains. So I think that illustrates foul/fowl is a matter of perspective.)