Usage Tip: disperse vs. disburse

This one actually caught me by surprise--I came across it in a white paper I was reading and almost didn't catch it!

Disperse means to spread out or distribute. Dispersal refers to the process of distributing or spreading out.

Disburse means to pay for something out of an account. A disbursement is a payment from an account, and disbursal is the act of paying from an account.

Incorrect:

• I need to call my IRA company to arrange for a dispersement from my account.  
• I am responsible for dispersing funds from our organization's accounts.
• We need to disburse the experts among the different teams.
• Plants use a wide variety of methods for seed disbursal.

Correct:

• There is a place on your tax form to record any disbursements from your retirement funds.
• As soon as I have approval from the head accountant I can disburse the funds.
• The internet has allowed the widespread dispersal of ideas across the world.
•  Once we get to the park, you can all disperse and explore wherever you want.
  

Usage tip: Insight vs. incite

Here's another one I've seen popping up in workplace messages recently.

Incite is a verb. It means to encourage, prompt, or instigate, especially violent or chaotic events. 

Insight is a noun. It refers to knowledge, understanding, or intuition, especially that achieved through personal experience or involvement with a group or concept.

Incorrect:

• I am writing an article about [group], and I wanted to get your incite since I know you have worked closely with them before.
• Can you provide any incite into this issue?
• He didn't intend to insight violence with his words.

Correct:

• Freedom of speech generally does not apply to speech that incites violence. 
• When people are stressed and desperate, it doesn't take much to incite a riot.
• I've lived in New England most of my life, so I can provide some insight into the regional culture.
• Many people respect spiritual leaders when they can provide deep insight into the human condition.
  

Usage tip: depravity vs. deprivation

Short and sweet, inspired by a recent article in my local newspaper:

Depravity refers to the acts or characteristics or acts of someone who is depraved--i.e., morally corrupt, evil, toxic. Deprivation refers to a state of being denied or refused access to something--the state of being deprived. 

Incorrect:

• Lots of people complain about daylight saving time because it leads to sleep depravity.
• It is hard for people who haven't experienced it to understand the acts of deprivation committed by war criminals.

Correct:

• New parents, suffering from sleep deprivation, are more likely to fall asleep while driving.
• Upon seeing the video footage of the massacre, I was left speechless by the depravity of the acts it showed.

Usage tip: queue vs. cue

Both queue and cue can be nouns or verbs, so this will be a two-part discussion. Enjoy!

Nouns

The noun queue refers to a group of people (or, for the more fanciful, "entities") who are standing in a line; it can also refer to the line itself in the abstract. It's more commonly used in British English than American. 

In contrast, the noun cue typically refers to a prompt or trigger for an action; it can also be a shortened version of cue stick, the stick used for shooting pool or billiards.

So:

Incorrect:

• Right on queue, the cat started yowling.
• I was going to go to the movies tonight, but there was a ridiculous cue for tickets. 

Correct:

• Have you seen the queue for security to get into the bar? It's out the door!
• Remember, when you hear the phone ring, that's your cue to open the door.  
  

Verbs

These are pretty easy to remember once you understand the distinction between the nouns. The verb queue is the action of forming a queue or line; the verb cue is the act of prompting an action. 

So:

Incorrect:

• We're going to cue for the train. 
• I'll queue you when I want you to turn on the lights. 

 Correct: 

• I'm not doing much, just queuing for the show.
• When you're ready for me to come in, cue me.

So there you have it! 

And remember: "que" is not an English word ;-) 

Usage tip double dip: poll/pole and roll/role

So, after a long-ish hiatus due to factors beyond my control, I have returned. And what better way to return from hiatus than with a double dose of homophones?

A poll is a survey, typically used to assess people's opinions. A pole is a long, thin, generally cylindrical, typically vertical object. (Unless you capitalize it; a Pole is a person from Poland.)

INCORRECT:
We took a pole to decide what kind of food to have at the company picnic.
I always walk into that poll in the basement.

CORRECT:
A recent poll shows that most people are sick of taking polls.
Our garage's roof was unstable, so we put a pole in to hold it up.

A roll is a small, typically single-serving-size piece of bread; it can also refer to an object in the shape of a small cylinder. The word roll can also be a verb, meaning to move via rotation or (typically combined with up) to fold a flat object to form a cylinder. A role is the part an actor plays, or the function of a component of a system.

INCORRECT:
I love coming to this restaurant; they make the best dinner roles.
He made cabbage roles for dinner.
I used to love to role down the hill when I was a kid.
Make sure to role the dough evenly, or your cinnamon roles will look strange.
The actor playing the leading roll was not very good.
No one is quite sure what the roll of the senior vice president is, other than to look good on television.

CORRECT:
Please make sure to pick up some grinder rolls at the grocery store.
Pass me that roll of parchment, would you?
If your emergency brake is broken, your car may roll away.
I had so many posters that, when I rolled them up, the roll was two inches thick!
Do you know who had the leading role in that movie?
My role is primarily that of a troubleshooter.

Usage tip: pore vs. pour

I have a research review in progress. Until then...

I read an email the other day in which the writer said he was "pouring over the image." Unless the image is liquid-proof, this could be problematic...

Pour refers to what happens to liquids when you tip their containers. If you're focusing a lot of attention on something, you're poring over it.

CORRECT:
I pored over every detail of Dumbledore's conversations with Harry to figure out what was coming next.
It was pouring out when I left work.

INCORRECT:
I don't want to spend hours pouring over tax guidelines, trying to figure out what deductions I can take.
I pored the oil into the saucepan before adding the garlic.

Usage tip: sleight vs. slight

Today's tip comes to you courtesy of Tetley tea, who puts short quips on the paper tabs of their teabags. One I got today said "False friends give slight-of-handshakes."

Clever idea, but wrong word.

Slight means small, diminutive, thin, etc. Sleight means cunning, skill, or dexterity. So, false friends actually give sleight-of-handshakes.

CORRECT:
The magician used sleight-of-hand to hide the ball under the table.
We need to take a slight detour to avoid the construction.

INCORRECT:
Don't try to fool me with slight of hand!
At the next intersection, take a sleight right.

Usage tip: affect vs. effect

In nearly all cases, affect is a verb (meaning "to have an influence on"), and effect is a noun (meaning "result" or "influence"). Thus:

CORRECT
That movie had a strong effect on me.
The news report affected me greatly.
How does gravity affect matter?
What are the effects of solar radiation?

INCORRECT
The book I just read really effected me.
I don't drink because I don't like the affects.
Can you describe some of the affects of commercials?
Will Internet usage effect how we learn information?

One way I often remember it is this: Just like a comes before e in the alphabet, you have to affect something before you see an effect.

Just to confuse things, of course, there are situations in which affect is a noun, and in which effect is a verb. However, those usages are not parallel like the ones above.

Affect as a noun is almost exclusively used in psychology (and by people who are not in psychology but who want to sound like they are). In that context, affect refers to a person's behavior, mood, and general emotional state. (Also in this context, the word is pronounce "A-fekt", not "a-FEKT".)

Effect as a verb means "to put into motion" or "to cause". In this context, the word is pronounced "ee-FEKT", as opposed to the more common "uh-FEKT". It's almost always (at least in my experience) used with "change," as in "to effect a change". Again, this is an uncommon usage.

In general, to figure out whether to use affect or effect, try replacing the word with another noun or verb. If you can replace it with a verb, use affect. If you can replace it with a noun, use effect. But please, whatever you do, do not use impact!!

Usage tip: its vs. it's--with bonus visual aid!

So you think you've figured out how to use the apostrophe. The apostrophe is used to indicate possession and to take the place of missing letters in a contraction. No problem! You've got it down.

And then, along comes...its.

English being English, you know there has to be an exception to every rule (and several exceptions to each exception, too, in most cases). Well, its is it.

Use its to indicate that it owns something. Use it's to replace it is.

Correct:
The dog carried its bone to its den.
It's a nice day for a walk.
It's got a big scar on the back of its head.
It's a zombie! Run!

Incorrect:
The bird used newspaper in it's nest.
Its too late to watch TV tonight.
Its carrying its baby in it's mouth.
Its after your brains!

And just when I thought I had finished with The New Yorker ad fail, I get this week's issue and see this:

Usage tip: everyday vs. every day

This one crops up so often, it's practically an everyday occurrence. (ha, ha, ha...sorry.)

Here's the difference between everyday and every day:

Everyday is an adjective.
Every day is an adverb.

But that doesn't really matter. You want to know how to use them correctly, right? Here's a handy rule of thumb:

If you can replace the term in your sentence with occasional or frequent or any other adjective and have the sentence still make grammatical sense, chances are you should be using everyday. If you can replace the term with Tuesdays or sometimes, you should probably be using every day.

For example:

WRONG
This shampoo is best for every day use.
Everyday, I walk my dog.
People should try to exercise everyday.
Luckily, loud street arguments are not an every day occurrence in my neighborhood.

CORRECT
You can use this shampoo every day.
Some trainers say you should run every day, but I think that's too much.
He's trying to prove that he's an everyday guy.
Let's try to make laughter an everyday event.

Usage tip: complimentary vs. complementary

For me, the easiest way to remember the difference between these two is to remember the definitions of compliment (something nice you say about someone) and complement (something that completes a set or group).

Something that is complimentary is either a) free or b) flattering. (Maybe another way to remember it is to think "I like things that are complImentary". Or maybe that's just really corny.)

Something that is complementary completes a set, matches a pair, or fills out a group. Angles, base pairs, and wines can be complementary, but statements and newspapers generally aren't.

So, you can sip complimentary coffee while contemplating the complementary angles on the rafters above your head. But if you start encountering complimentary angles, you might want to get your eyes (ears?) checked...

Usage tip: enormity

Enormity does not refer to size. It means "horribleness" or "horrendousness."

If you talk about the enormity of a situation, make sure it's something terrible.

(My trusty Webster does allow the use of enormity to mean "enormous size or extent", but qualifies it by saying that it's considered "a loose use by some." Count me in that "some!")

Usage tip: i.e. vs. e.g.

Short and sweet:

i.e. means "that is" or "in other words". e.g. means "for example".

Usage tips (double dose!): insure vs. ensure and tenets vs. tenants

The use of insure vs. ensure might seem fairly straightforward, but I've found multiple instances of its misuse even in that bastion of copyediting, fact checking, and solid writing, The New Yorker. So here we go again:

To insure something means to agree to provide payment to the owner of the thing if something happens to it. You insure your house, your car, and your health. Unless you're talking about something an AllState agent would sell you, you shouldn't be using insure.

To ensure something means to guarantee or make sure that it happens. You insure your health in case you get sick, but you try to ensure good health by eating right and exercising.

So:
incorrect: We hope that the investment in science research today will insure advancements in quality of life in the future.
incorrect: You're required to ensure your car in most states.

I've also seen multiple incorrect uses of tenants to mean tenets. A tenant is a resident of a building. A tenet is a fundamental principle. Thus, religions have tenets, but (one would hope) not tenants.

So:
incorrect: The tenants of Buddhism include rejection of dukkha, or desire.
incorrect: The tenets of the building sued the landlord for negligence.

Usage tip: conflate vs. confuse

I've seen a lot of misuses of the word conflate lately. Many folks seem to be using it as a cooler-sounding synonym for confuse, as in "don't conflate political ambition with political knowledge."

I have to quote Inigo here: "You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means." (The Princess Bride)

According to my trusty Merriam-Webster (11th edition), this is the definition of conflate:

"conflate (vt): to combine or mix (two variant readings into a single text, etc.)"

And here's the definition of confuse:

"confuse (vt): 1) to mix up; jumble together; put into disorder 2) to mix up mentally; specif. a) to bewilder, perplex b) to embarrass; disconcert c) to fail to distinguish between; mistake the identity of"
(both definitions from p. 306)

Notice the subtle (or not so subtle?) difference here. Confuse means just what everyone thinks it means. If you confuse A with B, it means you don't know the difference between them, or you think they're the same thing. Conflate, on the other hand, doesn't mean what one might expect. If you conflate A with B, it means you combine them and come up with something that's related to both, but different from either.

If you're trying to say that someone has mistaken X for Y, then you need to say that the person has confused X and Y. Use conflate only when you mean that someone has taken multiple (slightly different) statements and combined them into one.

Usage tip: like vs. such as

Both like and such as are commonly used to compare two (or more) things. However, if you wish to write clearly and unambiguously, it's important to understand the distinction between the two.

When used to compare two or more things, the word like essentially means "similar to" or "in the manner of." In contrast, such as essentially means "for example."

Therefore, the following two sentences have different meanings:

Carnivores like wolves generally have large, sharp teeth.
Carnivores such as wolves generally have large, sharp teeth.

The first means that most carnivores that are similar to wolves have large, sharp teeth. It implies that carnivores that are not similar to wolves--say, for example, sharks--do not have large, sharp teeth.

The second sentence tells us that a wolf is an example of a carnivore, and that most carnivores--including wolves, and including sharks--have large, sharp teeth.

The insertion of a comma can affect meaning, too. A "like XXX" phrase enclosed in commas generally means you're making an explicit match or link between two things. In essence, you are equating the two. For example:

Seals, like dolphins, are mammals.

This sentence is using dolphins as a referent and stating that seals are similar to dolphins in the specific way described in the sentence (i.e., they are both mammals). In a sentence of this form, the noun after like is generally assumed to be more familiar to the reader than is the subject of the sentence. (I.e., this sentence suggests that the writer expects the reader to be more familiar with dolphins than with seals.) This sentence is correct as written. Replacing like with such as in this case would make the sentence incorrect, because a dolphin is not a type of seal. If we wanted to use such as in this sentence, we'd have to change dolphins to a type of seal (e.g., "Seals, such as the Weddell seal, are mammals.").

Unless you want to make that explicit link between the two things, you generally want a "such as XXX" phrase inside your commas. For example:

Some actors, like Jonathan Frakes, are quite tall.

There's nothing really wrong with this sentence, if you are trying to get across that Jonathan Frakes is quite tall, and that some actors resemble him in being quite tall. But if you were trying to give Jonathan Frakes as an example of a tall actor, rather than as the definition of a tall person, then you would use such as:

Some actors, such as Jonathan Frakes, are quite tall.

(This sentence would also work with including instead of such as, but I won't go there right now.)