[PLEASE NOTE: After Deadline will be on vacation for two weeks and will return on Tuesday, March 5.]
My recent diatribes about relative pronouns, agreement and the perils of “like” have not exhausted the menu of favorite grammar gaffes. Danglers and the subjunctive will get their turn soon. But for this week, I’ll shift from grammar to word use, with the latest in our file of sound-alike mix-ups.
Fortunately many of these recent lapses were caught and fixed online or for later print editions — but not before they caused groans or chuckles among sharp-eyed readers and colleagues. Put them on your better-check-twice list.
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It’s easy to make fun of Ryan Seacrest — for his ubiquity on the show business landscape, for his over-weaning ambition, for his role in unleashing the Kardashian clan on America and for his relentless pursuit of celebrities as they head into award shows (captured most memorably a few years ago when he was shown on camera practically chasing Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie down the red carpet as they seemed determined to avoid him and his E! camera crew).
“Over-weaning” might describe an overly aggressive effort to shift babies or young animals off mother’s milk. Here, we meant “overweening.” (Spell-check should have helped on this one, but I think the hyphen in the original confused it.)
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Studying the python lifestyle is critical to success. Hunters must know that the best time to find one is the morning after the temperature drops into the 60s or below. The snakes surface to warm up in the sun. They stay close to water, so canals and levies are a good bet. They like rock piles.
We get this wrong surprisingly often. “Levies” are taxes; we meant “levees.”
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This is pure speculation but the singer/actor might have chosen the suit — from Mr. Ford’s spring line, its fit similar to those he made for the latest Bond film — because it indirectly complimented his forthcoming album, “The 20/20 Experience.”
We meant “complemented”; it was later fixed.
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But Wednesday’s hearing distinguished itself from the usual mandatory civic gathering. “In most instances, a public hearing is conducted to illicit commentary, both pro and con,” Mr. Freeman said in a telephone interview. “There would be few objections to better service.”
“Illicit” is an adjective meaning “improper.” We wanted the verb “elicit.”
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So far, defense budgets have not been squeezed by the Medicare vice.
In American English, the spelling for the tool is “vise,” not “vice.”
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“The principle function of the state and its officials is to protect its citizens,” said Judge Miguel Angel Gálvez before finding that there was sufficient evidence to try Mr. Rios Montt, 86, and another former general, José Mauricio Rodríguez Sánchez.
This is the one spelled “principal.”
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More often then not the spark was lost in the transition from sketch to masterwork, and the names of artists whose best work remained unvalued and invisible faded from history.
Just a typo, perhaps, but one that slips through surprisingly often. Make it “than.”
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Bill Pullman is Dale Gilchrist, the reserved but kindly president, who has an adoring second wife, Emily (Jenna Elfman), and four children from his first marriage who get into hairbrained scrapes — particularly Skip (Josh Gad).
Here’s one where spell-check should have helped; did we ignore its warning? We meant “harebrained.”
In a Word
This week’s grab bag of grammar, style and other missteps, compiled with help from colleagues and readers.
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Almost one million of these $35 machines have shipped since last February, capturing the imaginations of educators, hobbyists and tinkerers around the world.
This intransitive use of “shipped” has a flavor of jargon. Better to say “have been sold” or “have been ordered” or even “have been shipped to stores.”
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The Pentagon has created a new Cyber Command, and computer network warfare is one of the few parts of the military budget that is expected to grow.
Recorded announcement; let’s hear it from The Times’s stylebook this time:
[N]ote the plural verb in a construction like She is one of the people who love the Yankees. The test is to reverse the sentence: Of the people who love the Yankees, she is one.
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In 2011, he encouraged Jewish voters in Brooklyn and Queens to vote for a Republican, Bob Turner, instead of a Democrat, David I. Weprin, in order to send a message to President Obama, whom he felt was not supportive enough of Israel. Mr. Turner won, and Mr. Koch believed his strategy had worked.
“Who,” not “whom”; it’s the subject of “was.”
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Three centuries after Columbus is said to have made landfall in the Out Islands in 1492, the indigenous people had been either wiped out or shipped to Hispaniola, and the largely deserted land was settled by British loyalists and their slaves, whose ancestors make up most of the Bahamas’ residents.
We meant “descendants.”
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Mr. Marx acknowledged to me that the cost might well rise to $340 or $350 million.
Make it “$340 million or $350 million.”
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Mr. Neal, a G.E.D. student, was shot, as was Mr. Berry and a maintenance worker whom the authorities described as a bystander.
Make it “as were Mr. Berry and a maintenance worker.”
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Mass kidnappings, too, are not uncommon, either for ransom, robbery, the result of mistaken identity or to terrorize rivals.
Delete “either,” which ordinarily cannot be followed by more than two choices, and make the four possible goals parallel.
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“It was an underdog’s victory, just like the story of Esther and Mordechai,” he said, referencing the biblical protagonists.
This use of “reference” as a verb is unnecessary jargon; say “referring to” or “alluding to.”
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After months of occupation by Islamist fighters, the people of Timbuktu recalled surviving the loss of tranquility.
Per the stylebook, it is “tranquillity,” with two L’s.
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LOS ANGELES — Cardinal Roger M. Mahony, who retired less than two years ago as the leader of the nation’s largest Roman Catholic archdiocese, was removed from all public duties by his successor, Archbishop José H. Gomez, as the church complied with a court order to release thousands of pages of internal documents that show how the cardinal shielded priests who sexually abused children.
When? A news lead like this should have a time element; this one didn’t.
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“I was forced into a difficult decision: Should I go out of business or should I cheat?,” he wrote.
No comma after the question mark.
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The ship, which is based in Brooklyn and brings cars and trucks to St. Marc, Haiti, was anchored off Staten Island between the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge and the ferry terminal, waiting out a patch of bad weather, said an official of Devon Shipping, Inc, which owns the vessel.
Since we were not writing from Haiti, this should be “takes,” not “brings.”
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Both are wonderful, particularly if you convince Mr. Wijesinghe, who waits tables in a sarong, that you can handle some spice.
The stylebook prefers “waits on tables.”
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Whether feral or domestic, cats are tuned to the hunt, and when they see something flutter, they cannot help but pounce.
From the stylebook:
help (v.). Use the construction help wondering, as in He cannot help wondering. Not He cannot help but wonder.
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In the fall of 2008, Nicole was attending a one-year bible college and working at an ice-cream shop.
Uppercase Bible when, as here, it refers to Scripture.