http://books.guardian.co.uk/news/articles/0,6109,1256469,00.html
Where to stick grocer's apostrophe
John Ezard, arts correspondent
Thursday July 8, 2004
The Guardian
We have finally got the hang of the grocer's apostrophe. But we still
have little clue how to defuse, or diffuse, our other hang-ups about
the correct use of words - and computer spellcheckers only make our
task harder.
This is today's (not todays) verdict from Oxford University Press. It
reports evidence from its 300m-word database of "a new kind of problem"
among otherwise relatively literate people.
One of the epidemic errors of the past 30 years - unnecessary,
misplaced or omitted apostrophes in the words "its"and "it's" - has
dwindled to only about 8% of people, possibly because the mistake has
drawn so much ridicule. It was dubbed "the grocer's apostrophe" because
of its unnecessary use in plural words on shop signs or placards
(Price's Slashed).
But it has been replaced by misuse of "diffuse" or "defuse" (as in "A
coach can diffuse the situation by praising the players").
Research for the new Concise Oxford English Dictionary, published
today, found that this word crime was committed in some 50% of examples
on the database. It is now rated as the commonest in the language.
Second commonest is uncertainty over when to use "rein" or "reign",
found in 26% of examples, as in "A taxi driver had free reign to charge
whatever he likes".
Third most frequent (21%) is "tow" instead of "toe", as in "Some
pointed to his refusal to tow the line under Tony Blair". Fourth (12%)
is "pouring" instead of "poring", as in "He spent his evenings pouring
over western art magazines".
Other common confusions include pedal and peddle, draw and drawer,
compliment and complement and their, there and they're.
Angus Stevenson, of OUP dictionaries, said yesterday: "This seems to be
something of a new situation. These errors are occurring in texts that
are otherwise quite well spelt, possibly because of the increasing use
of spellcheckers. Spellcheckers can tell you whether a word is
correctly spelt - but not whether it is properly used.
"Also, we find that people are picking up words and phrases from the
media and bolting them together into fully formed sentences."
The OUP database contains mainly written word usages. To measure
speech, it used to include recordings from radio but now takes examples
from the internet instead.
"People are increasingly writing on the internet as if it was a spoken
rather than a written medium, with all the mistakes which arise through
doing that," Mr Stevenson said.
Newly coined, or revived, words and phrases printed for the first time
in the latest Concise dictionary include metrosexual (used about David
Beckham and others), sex up, congestion charge, health tourism, pole
dancing, speed dating and threequel (a second sequel).
Often confused words
diffuse/defuse
reign/rein
tow/toe
pour/pore
draw/drawer
compliment/complement
discreet/discrete
affect/effect
flare/flair
grisly/grizzly
it's/its
loath/loathe
loose/lose
peddle/pedal
principal/principle
stationery/stationary
whose/who's
their/there/they're
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