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Rack vs. wrack
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Happy Friday, and welcome to the second edition of this newsletter series featuring quizzes on commonly confused words. Last week we covered loath vs. loathe, and most of you got it right! Collectively, you outscored people who took our commonly confused words quiz, where the split on this question was exactly 50/50. And if you didn't get it right, no worries! Here's a quick review: We covered these homophones in a newsletter last year. Read the full lesson here. Now onto this week's quiz, which features one of our favorite common mistakes.
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Hone your writing skills and never use "hone in" again. Get writing tips, have fun with words and learn something new in a one-minute read each week by signing up for Stylebotโs newsletter.
Have you ever had to alter a draft of your writing because you confused two homophones? It's easy to do online, but harder if you're using expensive stationery. And what about those instances where you didn't even realize you were using the wrong homophone? Knowing you've been doing it wrong for years can feel like a hangar-size mistake. Any idea where we're going with this? ๐ You might have spotted three sneaky homophones in the sentences above: alter, stationery and hangar. Each has a...
If you waited with bated breath last week for the Ides of March to pass, you can thank Shakespeare. We already told you that he gets the credit for the lasting power of the Ides of March as a bad omen. He's also responsible for keeping bait's homophone "bate" around in another enduring phrase. We don't use "bate" very much anymore, but it came about in the 1300s to mean "to diminish" (and yes, its origins are tied to a shorter version of "abate," which is still commonly used today)....
Today is Friday the 13th, the second one of the year. And if today's association with bad luck isn't enough for you, then look no further than Sunday's bad omen: the Ides of March. So what do we make of these two inauspicious days? The origins of Friday the 13th being unlucky are hard to pin down, though Christianity and Norse mythology regard 13 as an unlucky number of dinner guests, according to Encyclopaedia Britannica. Britannica also points to other biblical references that regard Friday...