I’m just going through what I believe to be the final edit of my book Juggling Life, Kids & You and I’m stuck on the word inbox. I have 4 instances of ‘inbox’ and 20 of ‘in box’. Which is the correct one? On turning to Google, I cannot find anyone that has written in box … Continue reading
I was going to write the words ‘shock horror’ in my blog yesterday but hesitated as I didn’t know if it was hyphenated, separated by a comma or just two separate words. The Cambridge dictionary defines it as “an expression used when you are pretending to feel very shocked by a piece of news” and shows … Continue reading
According to Wikipedia, mnemonics are “any learning technique that aids memory” and I think they are wonderful things if you can remember them! A school friend (back in the ’80s) gave me a tip on how to spell the word necessary and I can honestly say that I have recited the following phrase in my head almost every time I have … Continue reading
This week I have been looking at commonly misspelled words, and ‘proof’, ‘prove’ and ‘proving’ fall into this category. Although I know that proof has two ‘o’s and prove hasn’t, I tend to pause when writing ‘prove’ or ‘proving’ as it sounds like they should have a second ‘o’ (as in ‘proove’ or ‘prooving’). An article on … Continue reading
A work colleague suggested today’s blog. He told me that he’s seeing an increasing amount of people confusing the words lose and loose. Apparently it’s been a word confusion for many years, more so recently because of predictive texts. Why is everybody starting to spell “lose” wrong? writes a very frustrated user on yahoo answers. This question is … Continue reading
I love reading and have always encouraged my two daughters to do the same. The last few weeks in particular, I’ve been spending more time with them and helping them to learn and recognise new words as they read their school books to me. This has led to a noticeable improvement in their spelling. Whilst … Continue reading
A commonly misspelled group of words are committee, committed, committing and commitment. Notice how the word commitment has only one ’t’ whereas the other words have two; however, don’t forget that in all word forms they have two ‘m’s. Here is a list provided by wikihow: http://www.wikihow.com/Spell-Commonly-Misspelled-Words A few commonly misspelled ones on the list are: Suprise (correct spelling: … Continue reading
Did you spot the mistake in the Wikipedia image? The theme this week is commonly misspelled words. In fact misspelled is one in itself – a lot of people spell it with one ‘s’ when in fact is has two. There also doesn’t appear to be a spelling ‘misspelt’ and no one has even written about … Continue reading
I’m going to be honest here – I wrote down the words brocolli and broccoli yesterday and decided that the former was correct. Later in the same day, my six year old daughter asked why I had written both spellings down and quite confidently told me that it has to ‘c’s and one ‘l’. I double checked the dictionary and … Continue reading
A work colleague asked me how to spell this word yesterday and I replied quite confidently that it was ‘supercede’ but then (feeling a blog coming on) I decided to look it up to confirm. I was amazed with what I found. I then asked the next seven people that I spoke to (and they … Continue reading