Month: May 2008

“Do to limitations …”

Devolution toward Simpler, Idioms

I saw this in a technical document.

Problem:
“Do” is the wrong word here.

Explanation:
“Due” is the right word here because “due to” is an idiom that means attributable to.

The writer could have missed the mistake because “do” and “due” sound alike to most Americans.

The writer could have made the mistake because he or she did not know that “due” is the correct word.

In any case, I believe that use of “do” in place of “due” is consistent with my “Devolution toward Simpler” linguistic hypothesis. It’s simpler to write “do” (two letters) than to write “due” (three letters).

For fun, I searched Google for each of the following phrases (with the quotation marks) and got about the indicated numbers of matches:

  • “due to limitations” — 703,000 matches
  • “do to limitations” — 505 matches

This tells me that Web authors have written the idiom correctly vs. incorrectly by a ratio of 1,392:1, which is excellent!

Solution:
“Due to limitations …”

“HIS & HER’S WALK-IN CLOSET”

Possessives, Pronouns

I saw this yesterday in a real-estate advertisement.

Problem:
“HER’S” is a nonsense word.

Explanation:
The pronoun “her” is:

  • the objective case of the pronoun “she” (e.g., “Give this green handbag to her.”);
  • the possessive case of the pronoun “she” used as an attributive adjective (e.g., “Her handbag is the green one.”);
  • the dative case of the pronoun “she” (e.g., “I gave her the green handbag.”).

The pronoun “hers” is a a form of the possessive case of the pronoun “she” used as a predicate adjective (e.g., “The green handbag is hers.”).

In contrast, “her’s” is a nonsense word.

The woman who wrote the real-estate ad meant to say that the walk-in closet was suitable for a man and a woman simultaneously, and she could have used “her” or “hers”:

  • Using “HIS-&-HER” would have meant that she wanted to say that the walk-in closet would be equally possessed by the man and woman.
  • Using “HIS-&-HERS” would have meant that she wanted to say that the walk-in closet had a “his” area and a “hers” area.

For fun, I searched Google for each of the following words (with the quotation marks to avoid modified forms) and got about the indicated numbers of matches:

  • “hers” — 23,800,000 matches
  • “her’s” — 1,290,000 matches

Although some of the “hers” matches related to acronyms (e.g., for Higher Education Resource Services), this still tells me that Web authors have written the word correctly vs. incorrectly by a ratio of some 18.4:1, which is okay, but the fact that the Web contains more than one million instances of “her’s” is disappointing.

Solutions:
“HIS-&-HER WALK-IN CLOSET”
or
“HIS-&-HERS WALK-IN CLOSET”

“Accessable”

Adjectives, Common English Blunders, Mispronunciations, Misspellings

I saw this in a PowerPoint document.

Problem:
This adjective is misspelled.

Explanation:
I believe that the misspelling of the adjective “accessible” is mostly due to the common mispronunciation — as “accessable” — of that adjective.

Other adjectives that use “ible” instead of “able” include “visible” and “horrible”.

The suffix “ible” is a variation of the suffix “able”; most people use memorization to know which suffix to use.

For fun, I searched Google for each of the following words (with the quotation marks to avoid hyphenated forms) and got about the indicated numbers of matches:

  • “accessible” — 130,000,000 matches
  • “accessable” — 2,170,000 matches

This tells me that Web authors have written the word correctly vs. incorrectly by a ratio of 59.9:1, which is good, but the fact that the Web contains more than two million instances of “accessable” is disappointing.

Solution:
“Accessible”