• Censor : to delete or suppress sensitive or dangerous information. The government
censored reports from the battlefield.
• Censure: to condemn or disapprove. The protestors censured the government’s
suppression of the news.
• Cite: quote or summon. I can cite several authorities. They were cited for speeding.
• Sight: to see or take aim. Dave Johnson Sighted a UFO on April 2.
• Site: location. This is a good site for links to Malaysian businesses.
• Client: user of the services of a business or a non- medical professional. As a client of
Textfor, you can expect the best in Web design.
• Customer: person who buys from store or business. As a customer of Self- Counsel
Press, you’re assured of prompt deliveries
• Climax : highest point, turning point in a story. The book’s climax is deeply shocking.
• Crescendo: growing in loudness or intensity. The crescendo of applause ended with a
standing ovation.
• Complement: to complete, or total. This tie will complement your suit very well. This
chip carries a complement of 32 crew members.
• Compliment: to praise. I most complement you on that elegant tie.
• Compose: make or create. This committee is composed of six industry representatives.
• Comprise: include or embrace. This committee comprises six industry representatives.
(Note: Never say “comprised of.”)
• Convince: to win an argument through appeals to logic and intellect. The experiment
convinced even the skeptics.
• Persuade: to win an argument through appeals motion. His tears and choked voice
persuaded her of his sincerity.
• Country: the territory of a nation. Canada is a very large country.
• Nation : the people of a country. Canadians are a largely peaceable nation.
• Dependant: a person who relies on another. My daughters are my dependants.
• Dependent: variable, depending on. Our starting time will be dependent on the
weather.
• Desert: desolate, to abandon, or something deserved. The rocky desert stretched to the
horizon. He deserted his companions. The king praised each knight according to his
desert.
• Dessert: a sweet. We had key lime pie for dessert. .
• Different. Used before a noun or pronoun. Taxco is different from Cuernavaca.
• Different than: used before a clause. Taxco was different than I had expected.
• Disc: correct spelling for all noun-computer references: A compact disc, a herniated
disc.
• Disk: correct spelling for computer references: a ZIP disk, a floppy disk.
• Disinterested: impartial, neutral. A disinterested arbitrator resolved the dispute.
• Uninterested: not interested. The arbitrator was uninterested in minor issues.
• Effective: having a desire result; coming into operation. The new policy, effective on
Monday, should be an improvement.
• Effectual: performing as desired. Her arguments were effectual in winning the debate.
• Every day: each day We record the air temperature four times every day.
• Everyday: routine. Recording air temperature is an everyday activity for us.
• Fever: used with countable plural items. We’ve had fever hits on our site this moth
than last month.
• Less: used with uncountable singular items. We have less traffic on our site this month
than last month.
• Gibe: insult, mock. I’m tired of your asinine gibes.
• Jibe: fit agree. Your estimate jibes with ours.
• Healthful: promoting good health. Vegetables from part of a healthful diet.
• Healthy: in good health. She remained healthy and alert well into her 90s.
• Hoard: a supply of something. We have a hoard of canned goods in the basement.
• Home in on : approach a desired goal. The pilot homed in on the radio beacon’s signal.
• Hone in on: incorrect that widespread usage; “hone” means “ sharpen” so the
expression is meaningless.
• Imply: suggest, hint. I don’t mean to imply that the mistake was deliberate.
• Infer: conclude, deduce. From the evidence, we can infer that the mistake was
accidental.
• Incidence: rate of occurrence. The incidence of drug-resistant tuberculosis is growing
rapidly.
• Incident: event. We’ve all learned from this unfortunate incident.
• Irregardless: incorrect or corruption of “regardless.”
• Its: belonging to it. The committee has a lot on its agenda.
• It’s: contraction of “it is” or it has” It’s going to be a long meeting. It’s been raining all
afternoon. ( by the way, its’ is not a word at all.)
• Loath: reluctant, averse. He was loath to confront the problem.
• Loathe: detest, hate. He loathes his adversaries.
• Moral: having to with good and evil. We faced a painful moral decision.
• Morale: group spirit. Morale on the office sank when we heard the news.
• Perquisite: a special privilege (perk). A new car is one of the perquisites of the job.
• Prerequisite: a condition or requirement. A BA is a prerequisite for admission to our
program.
• Principal: first or most important. My principal motive was to create a simple, elegant
Website.
• Principle: rule or idea. We support the principle of free speech on the Web.
• Proponent: advocate. She is the proponent of free speech on the Web.
• Protagonist: central character in a story. Ged is the protagonist of Ursula K. Le Guin’s
Earthsea novels.
• Reign: time of a monarch’s rule. England prospered during the reign of Elizabeth 1.
• Rein: harness or control. Our teacher kept us on a tight rein.
• Seasonable: appropriate to the season. Rainfall has been seasonable this summer.
• Seasonal: pertaining to the season. We’ve broken the seasonal record for rain this
summer.
• Toe the line: conform. The soldiers formed even ranks by toeing the line.
• Tow the line: incorrect usage, a misspelling of “toe the line “
• Waive: give up. You can waive your right to a jury trial.
• Wave: move back and forth. Wave good-bye to your hard won rights!
• Weaved: past tense of weave meaning to avoid hitting something, or to contrive an
involved story. The striker weaved through the defenders on his way to the goal. He
weaved an incredible tale of adventure and derring-do.
• Wove: past tense of weave meaning a fabric. Penelope wove endlessly at her loom.
You will have noticed that, in many of these cases, the difference between using the correct term and the incorrect one can be a spelling error that the spell checker on your computer will miss. That’s also true of many other words: to, two, and to, there, and their, and they’re coarse and course. Chances are you already know the words you have trouble with, so check them repeatedly against the dictionary until you’re using them correctly.
Don’t Use Extended Metaphors
In print text we may develop an argument through contrast and comparison –that is, by showing how two things are different or similar. Again we use transition words and phrases:
Unlike the dungeons, the castle’s main floor is well furnished.
Just as in Cuernavaca, your hosts in Taxco will make you feel very welcome.
In hypertext, as Robert E. Horn advises in his book Mapping hypertext, we can use such contrast and comparisons only within a single section. The same is of extended metaphors. In a print document, you might describe a government as a “ ship of state” with the executive as the bridge, the legislature as the engine room, and so on. This extended metaphor may work to help unify a passage of many paragraphs. But in hypertext, with readers skipping around in no predictable order, their first encounter with such a metaphor may be baffling.
Use Clear Antecedents
Hypertext must always include the antecedent for every pronoun in a given section. If write ‘She went on to earn a PhD in physics MIT,” I’d better mention her name earlier in the same section; otherwise readers won’t know who “she” is.
Grammar and Usage: Common Errors
Whether you’re in New Zealand or New York, chances are you make the same errors in Standard English. Here are some of the most common errors:
Sentence fragments
Your sentence will be a fragment if it lacks a subject or a verb. Here are some examples of fragments and their corrected version:
• Which surprised everyone./ This surprised everyone.
• Really weird./ I think that’s really weird.
• A superb musician but a troubled human being./ She was a superb musician but
a troubled human being.
• Not bloody likely!/ That’s not bloody likely!
Sentence fragment are often fine in captions and blurbs, where the readers doesn’t really need a full sentence. So a tag like “Joe Doakes in happier days” under a photo of Joe is all you readers require. A button linking to photos of your wedding can read “The Big Day!” instead of Come This Way to See Photos of Our Wedding Day.”
However, in text where you’re trying to explain or describe something in detail, avoid sentence fragments.
Subject-verb disagreements
Subject-verb disagreements are easy errors to make if you forget which word is your subject. For example:
The leader of the frightened soldiers were unable to make them cease firing.
Because “soldiers” is close to the verb, many people might make the verb plural (were) to agree with it. But look again—it was the soldiers’ leader, not the soldiers themselves, who couldn’t make them stop firing. The correct verb should be singular (was).
In other cases we have a compound subject but we mistakenly treat the two nouns like a single unit:
Snow and sleet makes hiking dangerous on the trails.
Spelling and grammar is my big problem in English.
In some cases, however, we really can treat a plural as a singular.
Six months is the standard probationary period.
A million dollars is still a lot of money.
Richards and Johnson is a distinguished legal firm.
And to make things really confusing, sometimes we can describe a single thing or person with more than one noun and we still use a singular verb:
The lawyer and human-rights activist has enjoyed great success.( One person with two titles.)
The singer and songwriter has won a Grammy. (One person with two skills).
If you’re worried about subject-verb errors and you’re not sure which noun is the subject, ask yourself: Who or what is performing the action of the verb in this sentence? Who’s enjoyed success? Who’s won two Grammies? The answer is your subject.
Incorrect pronouns
We use pronouns to stand in for nouns when repeating the noun would sound awkward:
Dora released her latest video last month, and she says she’s happy with it.
Imagine using “Dora” four times in the sentence:
Dora released Dora’s latest video last month, and Dora say’s
Dora’s happy with it.
We sometimes run into trouble when we forget that some pronouns are subjective (that is, they perform the action of the verb in the sentence) and others are objective (they receive the action of the verb).
He emailed her. She emailed him.
We’d laugh if we read:
Her emailed he. Him likes she a lot.
But may people, in conversation and in writing, will say:
She emailed him and I.
Me and her went to the conference.
Her and her husband set up a home-based business.
Evidently they think that the rules don’t apply if they’re talking about more than one person! But the rules do apply:
She emailed him and me.
She and I went to the conference.
She and her husband set up a home- based business.
Another pronoun problem is “myself” which some people use incorrectly. Pronouns with “self” are either reflexive or emphatic:
I ask myself a question (action of verb turns back one the asker)
I myself told you it wouldn’t work (emphasizes who told you).
Don’t use “myself’ as a long winded way to say “I” or “me”
Joan and myself went to the conference.
My wife and myself set up a home-based business.
Misuse of adjective for adverb
Adjectives modify nouns: a good man, a fast computer. Adverbs modify verbs, adjectives, and other adverbs: a truly good man, a really fast computer. Sometimes you can change the meaning of a sentence by using (or misusing) some common adjectives: “ You did good by winning the contest” incorrect, but “You did good by raising flood-relief money” is correct. We do well when we perform with style and excellence. We do good when you make the world a better place.
These are just four common grammar and usage problem areas. For details on this and many other hazard of usage, spelling and punctuation, consult almost any composition handbook or dictionary.
Exercises 2: Activating the Passive
Revise these sentences to activate the passive voice and then check your answers against those in the back of the book.
1. It argued some researches that alien bodies were retrieved by the US Air Force from a crashed spacecraft near Roswell, New Mexico, in 1947.
2. Miles Davis’s “Sketches of Spain” was hailed by critics as one of his finest
works.
3 The graphic user interface was originally developed by researches at Xerox.
4. A cholera outbreak in 19th-century London was stopped when a neighborhood
water pump’s handle was removed by a local physician.
Exercises 2—continued
5. These graphic have been chosen carefully to illustrate each step of the process.
Exercises 3: Using Anglo-Saxon Vocabulary
Replace each of the following words with an Anglo –Saxon word or phrase (or a more common Greco-Latin word).
1. Altercation
2. Antagonist
3. Capitulate
4. Celestial
5. Demotic
6. Epitome
7. Fiduciary
8. Gravamen
9. Impediment
10. Litigious
If you can’t find a shorter, clearer word without checking you dictionary, imagine how your readers would fell if they didn’t have a dictionary at all. Now that you know these words, do your readers a favor: don’t use them in your Webtext!
Editing Webtext
In ancient Rome, the title of the person who sponsored a gladiatorial fight to the death was Editor. Maybe because of that association with hacking and slashing, modern writers are often suspicious of editors. They shouldn’t be. A good editor can save you from countless embarrassing mistakes while helping you make your points more coherently, more eloquently, and even more gracefully.
What’s more, you can be your own editor. Here are some steps you can take improve your own text once you’ve drafted it.
Trash Your Spell Checker
Computer spell checkers are rubber crutches: they fail just when you need them most. All they do is compare what you’ve written with a list of words, and if they find the word in their list, they say it’s okay. So you may have written “their” when you meant to write “there” or “your” when you meant “you’re,” and the spell checker will tell you it’s correct.
The spell checker will of course catch outright typos, double words, and other errors, so it has some usefulness in that regard. But the quick skim of your document, flagging obvious goofs, is the bet you can hope for from a spell checker.
If you have a grammar and style checker, you’re a little better off, but not much. Style checkers can spot bad habits like overuse of the passive voice, or too many prepositional phrases. This at least forces you to think about whether you have to indulge in such habits.
Your style checker can also give you a sense of the reading level of your text. It does so by counting the number of syllables per word, the number of word per sentence, and the number of sentence per 100 words. The fewer the syllables, the fewer the number of words per sentence, and the more sentence per 100 words, the lower your reading level—usually expressed as a grade level. (This book is readable at the grade 7 level, for example.)
If your site is aimed at the general audience, especially one including young children or persons who don’t read English fluently, it’s common sense to keep the reading level as low as the subject permits. You don’t get extra points for making your text readable only to PhD candidates. Clearly you don’t want to dumb down your text needlessly, but a lower reading level makes your text understandable to more people. And the point of a Website, after all, is make information available to as many people as possible.
Cut Verbiage
Your hit and run text is all the most of your readers will bother with. Only the really dedicated people will actually look at your archived text and perhaps download it for careful reading. Therefore your hit an run text should be as brief as possible, so it delivers its message clearly and quickly.
If you set yourself an arbitrary word limit—for example, no chunk of text may run over 75 words—you will be amazed at how easy it is to cut the fat out of your text. I suggest as a first step that you deliberately write long chunks of text: maybe 150 or 200 words. Then start cutting words until you’re down to55 or 60 words; now you have the luxury of actually adding some words. Every sentence, every phrase, every word has had to fight for its life. Nothing is there just because it sounds good—you’re writing, remember, not making music! You’ve packed the maximum meaning into the minimum text, so you readers will get the message in the shortest possible time.
Critique Your Own Text
A writer lives inside your head, and so does an editor. They don’t always get along. The writer is having a great time being creative and showing off his vocabulary; the editor is watching over the writer’s shoulder and tearing her hair out. While the writer is cranking out Great Prose, the editor is screaming herself hoarse about what drivel this all is. The writer doesn’t hear details, but starts feeling nervous. “Maybe this isn’t all that good after all,“ he mutters. Finally he decides something’s gone horribly wrong (heaven knows what), and he abandons the job.
Sound familiar?
It doesn’t have to be that way. If you were a best-selling author, you could send your messed-up manuscript to your high-priced editor, who would tell you exactly what was going right and wrong with the manuscript and offer detailed advice on improvements. What if don’t have the services of a professional editor? Well, you have an editor living right inside your skull—all you have to do is give her a chance to put her criticisms into words.
So as you’re putting your Webtext together, keep a diary or journal in which you can make notes to your self about how your writing is going. If a problem does arise, your inner editor can sound off about it (“The introduction is way to long and to cute, and you don’t need to use the word fiduciary’’’).
Credit:ivythesis.typepad.com
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