Common English Blunders

“He has ran five miles.”

Common English Blunders, Verbs

I frequently hear sentences constructed in this way.

Problem:
A past-tense verb appears where the verb’s past participle is required.

Explanation:
The auxiliary verb “has” must be combined with a past participle to form a perfect tense.

Here are some examples:

  • He has eaten the piece of pie.
  • He has shaved five minutes off his marathon time.
  • He has cut his finger.

The first example uses “eaten” — the past participle of “eat”.

The second example uses “shaved” — the past participle of “shave”.

The third example uses “cut” — the past participle of “cut”.

The past participle of “run” is “run”, not “ran”, which is the past tense of “run”.

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

  • “has run” — 6,780,000 matches
  • “has ran” — 203,000 matches

This tells me that Web authors favor “has run” over “has ran” by a 33.4:1, which is good but not great.

Solution:
“He has run five miles.”

“Entitled” vs. “Titled”

Common English Blunders, Verbs, Versus

I often hear people use one of these words as a substitute for the other word.

Problem:
The words “entitled” and “titled” are not synonyms.

Explanation:
One definition of the transitive verb “title” is to call by a name.

An example of proper use of this verb is “He titled his autobiography ‘Jim’.”

One definition of the verb “entitle” is to give (a thing or person) a claim to something.

An example of proper use of this first definition of “entitle” is “American children are entitled to a tax-funded education.”

Another definition of the verb “entitle” is to confer an honorary title on (someone).

An example of proper use of this second definition of “entitle” is “The king entitled him Sir Muckety-Muck at the polo match.”

A third definition of the verb “entitle” is to give a title to something, but it does not refer to the title itself.

So it is incorrect to say or write “He entitled the book ‘Babe Ruth’.”, but it is correct to say or write “He entitled the book before he wrote it. It is titled ‘Babe Ruth’.”

In other words, one should not use “entitled” before the name of a movie, rock concert, book, athletic competition, painting, etc., but one may use “titled” before the name of any of these.

Solution:
Use “titled” but never “entitled” before the name of an event or creation.

“They credited me back the whole amount.”

Adverbs, Common English Blunders, Self-negation

I heard this yesterday during a news interview on a local television station.

Problem:
The adverb “back” makes the statement self-negating.

Explanation:
To “credit” an amount to someone is to refund what that person had paid.

The “re” in “refund” means back. Therefore, one could argue that a “refund back” action would never reach the intended recipient.

In other words, the adverb “back” should NOT be used to modify the verb “credit”.

For fun, I searched Google for “credit back” (with the quotation marks). Unfortunately, I could not use the results to get a reliable estimate of the number of erroneous instances because there are many instances on the Web of correct use.

For example, “Colorado lawmakers want to bring tax credit back.” is an example of correct use of “back” after “credit” because “back” in this sentence is modifying the verb “bring” instead of the noun “credit”.

Solutions:
“They credited me the whole amount.”
OR
“They credited the whole amount to me.”