Writing peeves the third
Sep. 12th, 2004 02:44 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
helviragoCause there are a couple more major issues, I just forgot about them when I was posting.
Here's a big one -- pored v. poured. What I see, often, is "He poured over the books". This generally ought to be "pored". They do, actually, come from the same Middle English root (it looks like). But I think of it as like examining something pore by pore. "Pouring over something," on the other hand, makes me think of the subject being liquefied and ladled out over the text in question. Ew.
Also, one other thing -- "lightening". Technically it is a word, and so spell-checker wouldn't catch it, but I see it far more often than can be explained by typos. Lightening would have to do with something becoming lighter. Lightning's that flashy electrical weather phenomenon generally associated with storms. I suppose one could say that there's a brief lightening of the sky when there's lightning in it, but 95% of the time, it ought to be "lightning".
Okay, I sound like a fifth-grade English teacher, I know, but I felt the need to get these things off my chest. I can feel the lightening of my spirits already.
Here's a big one -- pored v. poured. What I see, often, is "He poured over the books". This generally ought to be "pored". They do, actually, come from the same Middle English root (it looks like). But I think of it as like examining something pore by pore. "Pouring over something," on the other hand, makes me think of the subject being liquefied and ladled out over the text in question. Ew.
Also, one other thing -- "lightening". Technically it is a word, and so spell-checker wouldn't catch it, but I see it far more often than can be explained by typos. Lightening would have to do with something becoming lighter. Lightning's that flashy electrical weather phenomenon generally associated with storms. I suppose one could say that there's a brief lightening of the sky when there's lightning in it, but 95% of the time, it ought to be "lightning".
Okay, I sound like a fifth-grade English teacher, I know, but I felt the need to get these things off my chest. I can feel the lightening of my spirits already.
