Category: Pondering Grammar

Have you ever heard the idiom ‘toe the line’?

According to the Cambridge Dictionary, https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/toe-the-line, this phrase means to ‘do what you are expected to do without causing trouble for anyone.’

If you think about people lining up for a race, you can picture a literal interpretation of this idiom and it makes some sense. There is usually a line at the start, and the runners must get their toes right up to, but not over, the starting line. Unfortunately, I have often seen in writing ‘tow the line,’ which would have an entirely different meaning, and a rather amusing picture if illustrated literally as below.

This error seems to be due to the words being homophones, and very likely that users aren’t aware to what the idiom actually refers to.

Another error I’ve begun seeing frequently is the use of ‘shaw’ in place of ‘shawl’. I’m not certain of the origins of this mistake. In some instances, it may be due to how a person has heard it pronounced. In other cases, it appears to be an over-enthusiastic auto-correct. Either way, proofreading after writing is an absolute necessity!

There is a significant difference between ‘border’ and ‘boarder’. I have frequently seen the latter used where the former should be. A boarder is someone who is paying to stay in a boarding house, or a boarding school, or perhaps your home. A border, in the context in which I frequently see the other misused, is the final round or rounds on a crochet or knit project, meant to give the item (usually a blanket or afghan) a nice, finished look. Is it autocorrect? Is it writer inattention? I couldn’t say, but I will say again: proofread, proofread, proofread! And be aware of the many, many homophones in the English language.

That is all.

In a recent episode of Wheel of Fortune the contestants struggled to solve the puzzle ‘Renting a pedal boat’. Along with many others, including one of my parents, I was confused by this. I have never heard of a pedal boat.

After doing a little bit of research online, I came to find that what I, and apparently quite a number of other Americans, have always called a paddle boat, is indeed actually a pedal boat. I am floored!

A paddle boat is a boat steered with paddles. It seems that this can be a canoe or a kayak or something like one of those river steamboats; while a pedal boat is the kind that you steer with your feet on something like bike pedals. Shocking, I know. Now granted, those pedals turn paddles under water to make the boat move, so calling it a paddle boat is not entirely wrong.

I imagine at some point in the past someone misheard or mispronounced pedal as paddle and it spread, as these things do.

The next set of misused words I’d like to address are spiel and spill. This is an interesting one as it’s not particularly common, and I believe the misuse comes entirely from a misunderstanding of the pronunciation of spiel. 

It’s pronounced SPEEL, and sometimes SHPEEL, and is a speech or long-winded explanation. In some places, spill is pronounced SPEEL, but I think more often the error enters because of pronouncing spiel like spill.

Example: Every year, I must give my interpreter spiel to teachers who have never had Deaf students.

Several times, I have seen people write spill when they meant spiel. I believe it’s just one of those words people hear, but never see written.

I don’t want to get into a medical spiel, but the Awesome Word for today is actually two words: homonymous hemianopsia. While fun to say, it’s actually an unfortunate medical condition in which a person loses half of their vision in each eye – literally half. They can only see either the right half or the left half of what each eye should be able to see.

– with contribution from my dear friend, Stacy

The time has come for a new list of words people often mix up when they write. The first of these is drivel, which means nonsense, and the second is dribble, which means, essentially, drool.  People tend to try to use these words when they want to sound smart or pretentious, but they end up sounding exactly the opposite because the word they end up using is dribble, rather than drivel: ‘Stop driveling on!’ ‘His writing was pure drivel.’

(According to Google’s dictionary, these two words have a common meaning in the archaic usage – drool.) That does not mean they can still be used interchangeably. So, if you want to appropriately insult someone, use drivel…..unless they actually drool.

Another pair of commonly misused words are wary and weary. To be wary is to be uncertain of someone or something, not sure if they can be trusted. To be weary means you are tired or exhausted. I have frequently both heard and seen weary used in place of wary. This is simply a matter of knowing what these words mean and using them correctly. I am weary of seeing wary and weary confused.

Likewise, do and due are sometimes mixed up by writers. Do is a verb and denotes action, while due generally refers to something being owed. It can also be used as a synonym for phrases such as, ‘because of…’ as in this example: Due to unforeseen circumstances, I won’t be able to make it to the party. Do is also used in the phrase ‘make do,’ which I have often seen written, ‘make due,’ carrying an entirely different connotation. 

Dear writers and speakers of English, due to the amount of drivel to which we have become so accustomed, I grow weary of repeating myself: edit your works before you publish them, check your grammar before speaking, and please, let us revive the beauty that is the English language.

Do you see what I did in the title? There’s an apostrophe in the word apostrophe. It’s there for a particular purpose—in this case, to denote possession. I could also write this as ‘the place of the apostrophe’ as it would be said in some other languages like Spanish, but the apostrophe is a shortcut we Americans like to use. The problem of using an apostrophe comes when you put one in a word when you shouldn’t. Most commonly this is done when making a word plural.

Rule: Never* use an apostrophe to make a simple word plural!

An example: Mom’s and Dad’s work hard.

I shudder even writing that sentence. It should be: Moms and Dads work hard. All the unnecessary little apostrophes (see how I used it correctly there?) make me ever so slightly violent. I want to take a purple pen (because I don’t like red) and mark them all out. It’s actually funny that so many people add an apostrophe unnecessarily when our culture’s language seems to be going the way of reducing the number of letters and punctuation marks we use, especially in digital communication.

Apostrophes are used to show possession—Rose’s cat—or that a letter or letters have been removed from a word or words—that’s for that is, or ’til for until. People likely started overusing apostrophes because English grammar rules can be confusing and they feel over-correcting is better than under. I’m not sure I agree, though I have a struggle with commas. I tend to want to add them in places I feel warrant a pause, but then I look back and realize it’s too busy. I just want people to read what I write exactly as it sounds in my head!

I hope knowing this rule makes your life a little simpler, knowing you can actually leave out that apostrophe the majority of the time. Especially if you insist on leaving out half of your letters. Although, then you might need the apostrophe anyway, so just ignore all of this.

*There are a few exceptions, as with most grammar rules.  https://www.grammarbook.com/punctuation/apostro.asp

If you’ve never heard of boustrophedon, I’m about to show you what it is. Here it comes:

I must bring to your attention another pet peeve of mine. There are a number of words in the English language that are compound words, but are apparently quite confusing for most people to write. They are not sure if they should be written as one word or separate words.

Greetings Readers!

It has been far too long since I last posted. I’ve finally been driven to write this by several comments I’ve seen on Facebook, all containing the same error.



When you want to be a part of something, you certainly don’t want to be apart; but this is a mistake I’ve seen people making frequently.

They type: ‘I want to be apart of that group,’ when they mean that they want to be included. They’ve essentially said exactly the opposite. ‘Apart’ is used to say that you are ‘pulling something apart,’ or ‘keeping things apart.’

It’s just a space, people! Doesn’t take up much space and important for clarity.

On a new subject, I’d like to start highlighting wondrous words, words that aren’t used much anymore or may have obscure meanings but are fun to say or read.

Today’s wondrous word: forewent

I forewent my turn at the game. 

It’s the past tense of forego, which means to forfeit or not do something.

So, forego the misuse of apart and a part and make your grammar nerd friends happy!

I enjoy reading. Not just enjoy – LOVE! It’s probably my favorite pastime. I regularly read multiple books at once, usually on my Kindle app. Unfortunately, there is an epidemic of poor grammar, spelling and punctuation in many of the self-published books available. If you want to publish a book – great! Get your work edited (preferably by someone who knows what they’re doing) before publishing, though!

In kindergarten, most students start the year writing their names, and most other words, with all capital letters or a mix of capital and lowercase. As the year progresses, they learn that their names should be capitalized, but only the first letter. They learn that ‘I’ is always capitalized; and they learn to not have random capitals in the middle of their words and sentences.

In self-published books, I see many poorly worded sentences and misused words, but one book I read took me back to kindergarten, where the author should have learned to correctly use capitals. She had problems with word usage too, but I just want to address the capitalization right now. It bothered me enough that I actually wrote a review on Amazon. And promptly got yelled at by another reviewer for only giving 3 stars because of grammar. That wasn’t the only reason I gave it 3 stars, but poor grammar detracts from my enjoyment of a book. It brings me to a screeching halt so I can try to figure out what the heck the author is trying to say.

The capitalization errors were actually minor compared to some of the other mistakes, but it was interesting because I’d never seen anyone make this particular error so dramatically. You’re probably saying, ‘Get to the point, already!’

Here it is: The words mom, dad, mother and father are ONLY capitalized when used as proper nouns, as in the place of a name or in direct address, and NOT when used as common nouns.

For example:
     Yes – I told Mom that she should buy the dress.
     No – I told my Mom that she should buy the dress.

     Yes – I want Dad to come with me.
     No – I want my Dad to come with me.

This author capitalized mother and father EVERY TIME she used them. and that was a lot of times. The book was about a family so ‘my Mother’ and ‘my Father’ were on nearly every page! Halfway through the book I was ready to scream, but I did like the story enough to finish the book and even read the next couple in the series. The author did fix some of her mistakes in the following books.

It’s a fairly straightforward rule. If you can replace mom, dad, mother or father with a name, capitalize it. I return to my previous example. If I replace mom with Kate (my mom’s name), does it make sense?

     I told Kate that she should buy the dress.
     I told my Kate that she should buy the dress.

The first one makes sense but the second doesn’t.

That is all.

pLease capItaliZe Your senTenCes CorrEctlY!

English is a difficult language and it is distressing that more and more Americans don’t even know how to speak or write it correctly. Or they don’t care, which is almost as bad.