Verbs

“Reoccur”

Common English Blunders, Verbs

I often hear this.

Problem:
This is either a mispronunciation or an unnecessary invention.

Explanation:
Some people know the verb “occur” and assume that the repeat form of it should be pronounced “reoccur”; this is wrong.

Other people know the verb “occur” and assume that they must invent “reoccur” as the repeat form of it; this is wrong.

The correct verb — “recur” — already exists (and has no “oc” sound within it).

Wondering whether this speech problem also occurred in writing on the Web, I searched Google for “reoccur” and “recur” and got about 455,000 and 3,800,000 matches, respectively. That tells me that Web authors have written the word correctly by a ratio of 8.35:1, which is okay. And, because the most popular “reoccur” matches returned by Google talk about why this is a misspelling / mispronunciation of “recur”, the ratio of correct use to incorrect use probably is higher.

Solution:
“Recur”

“We have to error on the side of caution.”

Common English Blunders, Mispronunciations, Nouns, Verbs

I heard U.S. Congressman Bennie Thompson (D-MS) say this yesterday on Fox News Channel.

Problem:
The Congressman used the wrong word for the verb in this popular expression.

Explanation:
The word “error” is a noun and not a verb.

What the Congressman should have used is the word “err”, which looks like “error” but is a verb that means to be mistaken or incorrect.

Perhaps the Congressman simply mispronounced “err” (the verb) as “error” (the noun).

Wondering whether this could be more than a pronunciation problem, I searched Google — with the quotation marks included in the search box — for “error on the side of caution” and “err on the side of caution” and got about 20,200 and 441,000 matches, respectively. That tells me that Web authors have written the expression correctly by a ratio of 21.8:1, which is very good.

Still, over 20,000 matches for “error on the side of caution” indicates a substantial number of confused writers!

Solution:
“We have to err on the side of caution.”

“Must” vs. “Needs to”

Common English Blunders, Verbs, Versus

I often see “needs to” where “must” is required.

Problem:
“Must” and “needs to” are not synonyms.

Explanation:
“Needs to” in a sentence implies that the subject of the sentence has needs.

I often see “needs to” in technical documents that talk about software applications “needing to” do this or that.

When it comes to “needs”, let’s compare people, non-human animals, and inanimate objects.

People have needs. American psychologist Abraham Maslow argued that people have a pyramidal hierarchy of needs. The base of the pyramid refers to “Biological and Physiological needs”, and the top of the pyramid refers to “Self-actualisation”.

Non-human animals have basic needs. All would agree that non-human animals have biological and physiological needs (such as air, food, drink, and shelter).

Inanimate objects do not have needs.

I believe that one place where humans often go wrong is to impose human characteristics on inanimate objects. For example, software applications do not “need to” do anything.

“Must” is the appropriate replacement for “needs to” in such a situation. For example, a word-processing application does not “need to” offer an undo feature, but one could say that a word-processing application “must” offer an undo feature (e.g., to satisfy a human requirement that mistakes in operation of the application can be corrected easily).

One more point: Imperative sentences are spoken or written when one human is imposing a requirement on someone or something else.

So the statement “You need to clean your room.” said by one person to another is inappropriate as an imperative sentence, although it certainly could be appropriate as a descriptive sentence.

The statement “You must clean your room.” would be appropriate as an imperative sentence, with one person imposing a requirement on another person.

In contrast, the statement “You need to clean your room.” indicates that the speaker or writer of the sentence believes that the listener or reader feels a necessity to clean his own room.

Solution:
Use “must” when imposing requirements. Reserve the use of “needs to” to refer to the basic necessities of humans and non-human animals and to refer from a psychological angle to the “higher” needs of humans in Maslow’s hierarchy of needs.