Verbs

“Download it for free.”

Adjectives, Common English Blunders, Idioms, Nouns, Pronouns, Verbs

My wife saw this the other day on Oprah.com.

Problem:
“For free” is an informal idiom that bothers many readers.

Explanation:
For fun, I checked Google for the idiom “for free” (with the quotation marks) and got about 348,000,000 matches. Wow!

Many readers are bothered by the “for free” idiom because the word “for” is a preposition, prepositions should be followed by nouns or pronouns, and the word “free” is neither a noun nor a pronoun.

The word “free” is either a verb or an adjective. Some use the word “free” as an adverb — as in “running free” — but the correct way to make “free” into an adverb is to add the letters L-Y to the end — as in “running freely”.

One of the definitions of the word “free” as an adjective is without charge, cost, or payment — as in “free nachos with every beer purchased this evening”.

This gives us our solution, given that any preposition — such as “for” — should not be followed by an adjective — such as “free”.

Solution:
“Download it without charge.”

“Validate” vs. “Verify”

Verbs, Versus

I sometimes hear these two words used interchangeably.

Problem:
The verbs “validate” and “verify” are not synonyms.

Explanation:
The verb “validate” means to confirm.

The verb “verify” means to prove the truth of.

So one validates a computer program to confirm that it works as designed.

In contrast, one verifies a person’s identity to prove that the person is who he says that he is.

Solution:
Use the verb “validate” when confirming that something behaves as designed. Use the verb “verify” when focusing on the truth.

“… all of which I use alot, …”

Adverbs, Common English Blunders, Nouns, Verbs

I saw this in a comment at EngadgetMobile.com.

Problem:
The word “alot” — spelled A-L-O-T — is a nonsense word.

Explanation:
The comment writer was referring to cell-phone functions that he uses often, not a little.

So he should have written “a lot” — spelled A-space-L-O-T — instead.

The two-word, adverbial phrase “a lot” means to a great extent or degree.

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

  • “a lot” — with a space after the letter “a” — 640,000,000 matches
  • “alot” — with no space — 129,000,000 matches

This tells me that Web authors have written the adverbial phrase correctly vs. incorrectly by a ratio of 4.96-to-1, which is dreadful.

Note: The adverbial phrase “a lot” should not be confused with the verb “allot” — spelled A-L-L-O-T — which means to apportion, to appropriate, or to dedicate.

Solution:
“… all of which I use a lot, …” — with a space between the indirect article “a” and the noun “lot”