Tricky words

 

  • alumna – female former member [of college etc]
  • alumnae – plural form for female-only former members [of college etc]
  • alumni – plural form for either male-only or mixed-gender former members [of college etc]
  • alumnus – male former member [of college etc]
  • benefited
  • biased
  • comprise (not comprise of)
  • dependant (noun)/dependent (adjective)
  • email (lower case and not hyphenated)
  • enquire/enquiry (preferred to inquire/inquiry)
  • focused
  • fundraising

  • instalment
  • internet (lower case)
  • licence (noun)/ license (verb)
  • manoeuvre
  • no-one (hyphenated)
  • paralleled
  • postdoctoral (no hyphen)
  • postgraduate (no hyphen, whether as noun or adjective)
  • postholder (no hyphen and lower case)
  • practice (noun)/practise (verb)
  • riveting
  • supersede
  • website/webpage (no hyphen and lower case)

General guidelines

 

  • use suffix -ise NOT –ize

✓  Derren Brown hypnotised his subject live on TV..

  • retain -e where required for pronunciation: ageing, acknowledgement, judgement
  • proper names ending in -y do not change to -ies if pluralised
  • foreign spellings;  just use ‘e’ spellings, not ae or æ, where in common British usage

✓ encyclopedia
✓ medieval

  • plurals: use appropriate foreign (particularly ancient Greek and Latin) plural forms where still in common usage (also see alumnus under spelling section above)

✓ nucleus–nuclei
✓ stratum–strata
✓ genus–genera
✓ medium–media
✓ datum–data
✓ analysis–analyses
✓ basis–bases
✓ crisis–crises

  • note that more than one form is sometimes in use for different meanings of a word:

✓ formula–formulas but formulae in maths/chemistry
✓ index–indices for maths and indexes for books
✓ appendix–appendices for books and appendixes in anatomy

  • contractions: use of ‘hasn’t’ rather than ‘has not’ etc is fine in the majority of cases, especially informally
  • with compound words formed by a noun and an adjective or two nouns connected by a preposition, pluralise the (more important) noun

✓ Attorney General/Attorneys General
✓ brother-in-law/brothers-in-law
✓ passer-by/passers-by

Word usage and spelling

 

among v between

 

  • Among is used for undifferentiated items (She couldn’t decide among all the colleges.)
  • Between is used with individual, named items (She couldn’t decide between Magdalen or St Hilda’s.)

 

less v fewer

 

  • Less is used with nouns which are not countable objects: if you could use much to describe having a lot of the noun, use less (‘I can’t eat that much cheese: please give me less.’)
  • Fewer is used with countable objects: if you could use many to describe having a lot of  the noun, use less (‘I can’t eat that many sprouts: please give me fewer.’)

 

effect v affect (verb)

 

  • Effect as a verb means to bring about, or to have the result that: A glass of brandy may effect his recovery. (effect his recovery: improve his health to the point of recovery)
  • Affect as a verb means to have an impact on or to change something; it also means to simulate something which is untrue:

✓ A glass of brandy may affect his recovery. (affect his recovery: have an impact on whether or not he recovers at all, or the speed of his recovery)
✓ He affected to have drunk only one glass of brandy. (affect to have drunk only one glass: pretend to have drunk less brandy than actually drunk)

 

effect v affect (noun)

 

  • Effect as a noun means the impact something causes

✓ The storm had wide-reaching effects.

  • Affect as a noun means someone’s outward appearance of their psychological state

✓ His affect was one of cheerful indifference.

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