You Can't Trust a Spell-Checker: Homonyms and Other Nuisances

Your spell checker only wants you to use words that exist; it doesn't care what they mean. Here are some words that turn up wrong again and again, even in printed books that were apparently copy-edited by machine.

Discreet and discrete - two discrete meanings.
"Discreet," means prudent, or careful. You are discreet about your affair with the boss, or your spending, or the words you use to your mother-in-law. "Discrete," means separate, individual. You may have two discrete checking accounts, or you may divide the breeds of dogs into five discrete categories. So don't - please, please don't - have your main character promise her friend to be discrete!

Never whale on a wailing child.
Ghosts and frustrated toddlers "wail." If you want to say you hit someone repeatedly, you "whaled" on them- spelled just like the large marine mammal. (And, of course, the country right next to England is Wales - no H.)

"It's" means "it is."
Yes, we use an apostrophe to mark the possessive when we're using nouns, but we don't use one for pronouns; we use a possessive form of the pronoun. He, his. She, hers. Them, theirs. It, its.

Free rein - but not in word usage.
If you give your curiosity free rein, you spell it "rein." The image is a horse with a loose rein, not a king, so it's not "free reign."

Copyright
Written work can be copyrighted. Not "copywritten." That's an easy mistake to make, but the word is "copyright," and it refers to the legal right to copy it. There's no such word as "copywrite."

There is, however (to make it more confusing) the word "copywriter," which means someone who writes advertising copy. So it's easy to think your spell-checker is wrong when it flags "copywrite," but it's write. I mean, right.

You have the right to your rite.
And speaking of rights, the Bill of Rights states you have the right to freedom of worship - but a "rite," is a ceremony, like a wedding or a Girl Scout award ceremony.

Boom!
Suppose you're in a tense situation. You make a joke to defuse it. That is, your joke figuratively took the fuse off the dynamite (de-fused it), so the explosion didn't happen. You didn't "diffuse," it. "Diffuse" is what smoke does as it rises from the grill- it spreads out and gets thinner.

Sources and situations.
If you're citing your sources, one of the sites you cite could be Associated Content. Ouch. Anyway, a "site" is a place where something is, whether it's the site of the train wreck, the site for the new City Hall, or a web site. And when you're building a house, you may want to site it on a hill to get a view. But when you refer to or list an authority, you are citing that person, book, or website.

Stationary stationery.
If you're standing in one spot, you're stationary. However, if you want writing paper and envelopes, that's stationery, and you buy it at a stationer's store. (Of course, if you leave your stationery on the desk, it will be stationary as long as no one moves it.)

The O on the Capitol.
The Capitol building is in Washington, DC, which is the Capital of the United States. Just remember that only the buildings with the big round domes have the round O in the last syllable. Everything else - capital cities, capital letters, invested capital, the capital at the top of a Greek column, English people in old books saying, "Capital!" - is spelled with the A.

Do you want to hear about "effect" and "affect"? If not, stop here. They are a real nuisance.
The normal and usual way to use "effect" and "affect," is that "effect" is a noun- your words can have an effect on someone, say. And "affect," is a verb. "Our kitchen remodel affected the value of the house," you might say. You could also say, "Our kitchen remodel had an effect on the value of the house." They mean the same, but "effect" is a noun.

(You want the exceptions? If you're speaking or writing quite formally, you might use "effect" as a verb to mean, "made." "The physical therapy effected a significant change on the patient's health." But you probably wouldn't. And, if you're talking about psychology, "affect," can be a noun meaning "emotional expression." If your face looks kind of dead, you're showing a flat affect. It could be a symptom.)

But for the most part, you either affect something, or have an effect on something.

As I hope these few words have a beneficial effect on your writing.