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Thanks for participating in our eggcorn hunt a couple weeks ago. We know a lot of you found all of them, but here’s the answer key just in case: Original: He had a deep-seeded fear of jellyfish, so she knew the postponement of the scuba diving trip was, for all intensive purposes, a cancellation. She quickly began pouring over travel guides to find another way to spend their time off. Corrected: He had a deep-seated fear of jellyfish, so she knew the postponement of the scuba diving trip was, for all intents and purposes, a cancellation. She quickly began poring over travel guides to find another way to spend their time off. We’ve already covered for all intents and purposes and pore over in this newsletter. But we haven’t written about the third eggcorn: deep-seated. And, you guessed it, that’s what we’re covering this week. The confusion between “deep-seated” and “deep-seeded” is multifaceted (and perhaps deep-seated in some cases). It all starts, of course, with the fact that “seated” and “seeded” sound pretty much the same. Add to that the fact that seeds go deep into the ground, but how deep can a chair or couch really get? But to seat is to position yourself or someone (or something) else. And there’s evidence that the origin of the phrase “deep-seated” has to do with diseases (as in, things situated deep within the body), not plants. Want to call the whole thing off? You can simply swap “deep-seated” for “deeply rooted.” 🤷♀️🌱 ❤ Team Stylebot
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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 Stylebot’s newsletter.
One fun thing about writing is that it's both rule-based and flexible. So sometimes, there are no wrong answers. Such is the case with last week's quiz, when we asked you about the plural of octopus. Your choices were octopi (the plural that assumes a Latin origin of the word), octopodes (the proper plural for a word of Greek origin) and octopuses (the English way to pluralize it). Most of you picked "octopi," and exactly zero people chose "octopodes": No one got it wrong, and even if someone...
Today is the longest day of the year, and we can't write much more about it without revealing the answer to last week's quiz, so let's get right to it. The quiz was part vocabulary, part capitalization. We asked you to fill in the blank in this sentence: "They’re planning a party on the _______ to mark the longest day of the year." First, you had to recognize that the event marking the start of both summer and winter is a solstice, not an equinox, which marks the start of spring and fall....
Happy Friday...the 13th. Most of you got the right answer on last week's quiz. Just as you spell out one through nine and use numerals for 10 and higher, you do the same for ordinals. So this month we have Friday the 13th, and next month we'll have July Fourth. You got a peek at our Google Docs extension last week, and this week we're excited to share another great review: "Style Guide Checker is a great product that provides a second set of eyes to catch things that often go overlooked. Not...