MythrilMoth's List of Common Word Fails · 8:52pm Jul 28th, 2015
The following is a list of commonly misused words in fanfiction (and in general). This list will be updated periodically.
(If you notice something/have a pet peeve about something that isn't on this list, leave a comment and I'll add it.)
PRONOUN/CONTRACTION FAILS
"Its/it's": "It's" is a contraction of "it is". "Its" is a possessive; "belong to it".
"Their/they're/there": "Their" is possessive. "They're" is a contraction of "they are". "There" is neither.
"Your/you're": Again, "Your" is possessive. "You're" is a contraction of "you are".
"Whose/who's": Again, "Whose" is possessive. "Who's" is a contraction of "who is".
"Could of/should of": ALWAYS grammatically incorrect. "Could've" and "should've" are contractions of "could have" and "should have".
COMMONLY MISUSED WORDS
"To/too/two": The grandfather of all grammatical errors. Entire essays have been written about this, and I could go on at length for five thousand words about the subject. To keep it simple, "too" generally means the same as "also", or can also be used to indicate something is excessive ("too much", "too many", "too spicy"), and "two" is a number. If you're not saying either of these things, you probably want "to".
"Here/hear": Here is where you are. Hear is what you do with your ears.
"Vice-like": I see this too often. The correct word is "vise", not "vice". A vice is an indulgence, usually a harmful or illegal one. A vise is a tool used for holding something firmly in place.
"Baited breath": Bait is something you use to catch a fish. The correct word is "bated". As in "abated". As in "deferred".
"Another thing coming": I don't care how right you think this is, it's wrong. It's unfortunate that this has fallen into such common usage that people think it's right. The expression this morphed from is "If you think (something), you've got another think coming."
"For all intensive purposes": If you've ever done this, slap yourself. HARD. The correct phrase is for all intents and purposes.
"Principal/principle": These words are not interchangeable. They have entirely different meanings. Please make sure you're using the right one.
"Canon/cannon": These words are not interchangeable. A cannon is a big gun that shoots stuff. If you're talking about something that's in an episode of a show, unless you're talking about Pinkie Pie's party cannon, you mean the other thing.
"Faze/phase": This one's iffy and I don't personally see it often, but eh. It's one to be careful with anyway. "Doesn't faze me" is the correct expression, "phase" is a noun except when it's a science-fiction verb.
"Sight/site": You use your eyesight to look at a website. If you go into the city to see the sights, you might stop at a historical site.
"Complement/compliment": They're different things. See the comments for an explanation, because even yours truly screws this one up sometimes.
"Fair/fare": A fare is a fee you pay for a cab ride or an airplane ticket. It can also refer to the food on your table. For anything else, you probably mean "fair". State Fair, My Fair Lady, a fair maiden, fairly accurate weather news, etc.
"Aisle/isle": An aisle is the thing you walk down at the grocery store or when you get married. An isle is out in the middle of the ocean.
"Past/passed": In the past, I passed by a Passat.
"Definitely/defiantly": I honestly have never understood how people make this incredibly stupid mistake. It defies logic. They don't even SOUND the same. And yet, it shows up entirely too often in fanfiction and comments online. Folks, defiantly is not an acceptable spelling of definitely. Try looking it up in a dictionary and see what you're actually saying when you do this!
"Breath/breathe": Breath is the noun, breathe is the verb.
"Lose/loose": If the strap on your phone is loose, you might just lose your phone somewhere.
"Bare/bear": Bare your bottom, bare your midriff. Watch out for that bear, even if you're exercising your right to bear arms.
"Bemused/amused": Bemused is not a synonym for amused. Bemused means perplexed, confused, or bewildered.
"Soul/sole": Sole either means solitary/singular or the bottom part of your foot/shoe. Soul is the thing that comes out of you when you die other than blood.
"Regimen/regiment": You undergo a training regimen when you join an army regiment.
"Shear/sheer": Shears cut things. Sheer means "pure" or "complete" or something like that--or translucent, like "sheer stockings". Only a sheer idiot uses shear instead of sheer. 
"Knew/new" / "Know/no": Forms of the verb "know" have a K at the front and a W at the end (unless it's "known", but...you know.) If they don't, they're not the right word.
"Currant"/"current": Current means "up to date" or "happening now". Currant is a fruit.
"Faint/feint": Faint either means to suddenly pass out or to be barely perceptible ("a faint hope", "a faint glow"). A feint is a movement made to draw an opponent's guard in the opposite of the direction you're going to strike in.
"Affect/effect": The former is a verb, the latter is a noun. You can affect an accent; you can affect repairs on a ship. Ghost-type Pokemon moves have no effect on Normal-types.
"Peek/peak": Peek is what you do with your eyes. A peak is something you might take a peek at.
"Reign/rein": You rein in a horse or a person who's out of control or your temper. A king reigns over a kingdom.
"Break/brake": The things that stop your car are brakes, not breaks.
"Gate/gait": A gate is a thing that keeps people and animals in or out. 'Gait' is the one that describes walking.
"Shone/shown": Shone is the past tense of shine. Shown is the past participle of show.
Faze/phase
Sight/site
Complement/compliment
Fair/fare
Aisle/isle
Past/passed
Also, as bizarre as this one sounds, I frequently see people confusing definitely/defiantly.
I can't believe these are still used incorrectly. I will be the first to admit I still forget to add the second 'n' to cannon depending on how fast typing. This is a good post for some who may not know the difference in these words/phrases.
I don't trust myself to say such things so I'm glad someone else can!
Breath/Breathe shows up commonly around here, and it irks me each time.
Lose/Loose. I seriously once saw someone write the word "loosing" and I so desperately wished I could reach through my screen and strangle them.
I've seen people confuse "bare" and "bear" a few times...
To a lesser degree, confusing "stalactite" and "stalagmite" is a slight pet peeve of mine, but I don't see that one often.
bemused: it does not mean amused. definitely/defiantly is one of my pet peeves too. then/than, bob-wire, using 'I' instead of 'me' or vice versa because it seems fancier somehow
?personally I would use "another thing coming" (the correct way feels wrong to me), that said, I'd only use it in a quote of some sort because it sounds silly otherwise... same with "all of a sudden" (unless I'm being facetious)
i also hate grammar and spelling errors with a passion. except for the 'you have another thin(g/k) coming.' i have never seen 'another think' from anyone, anywhere.
Form/From. I've made this one plenty of times and it drives me insane when I edit a chapter and see it.
I'd definitely add then/than to this list.
Can't believe it's not here already, but to/too/two. And, speaking of here, here/hear.
Who vs. Whom
Whom is a version of "him". Who is a version of "he". Therefore...
He walked down the street.
Who walked down the street?
I walked down the street with him.
You walked down the street with whom?
This can become more difficult with whoever and whomever, but by playing around with the sentence a bit it can be figured out.
He did this.
Whoever did this...
I did it with him.
I did it with whomever was there.
To be more clear on the second to last one, Principal is the person in charge of a school, like Principal Celestia. Because she's your pal. Principle is the base idea of something, like scientific principles or "It's the principle of the thing"
Not much use knowing they're different if you don't know which is which.
Great job Moth, this thing is awesome. Though if you think I'm going to agree with #6, you've got another thing coming.
3277420 Ugh, the defiantly one REALLY bugs me, forgot about that.
Will add those, thanks!
3277470 That's because the incorrect usage has been prolific since the mid-70s, to the point where people have forgotten it's wrong.
3277476 That's really more a transposition error, not a word choice error.
3277542 Honestly? The whom thing is splitting hairs these days. Whom is kind of an archaism.
3277570 Fair enough, I suppose. It's still annoying.
Unique - means one of a kind. Something cannot be very one of a kind, so any attempt to modify unique (like very unique) is pointless
One that I see that bothers me:
Could've/Should've - Could of/ Should of
Could've = Could have, Could of = NO.
Actually, "vice" is an acceptable spelling of the tool. In fact, "vise" is only used in some parts of the US, whereas "vice" is used in both the US and Britain. However, I live in the United States and I have never ever seen somebody write "vise".
Haha nope! That actually calls for "complimentary."
"Complementary" describes a situation where two are more things are improved by being combined. For example, you could say peanut butter and jelly are complementary.
Regimen/regiment. I've come across a number of stories that have a character undergoing a course (training most often) and the author consistently uses the second one when they mean to use the first.
Only once did I see an author use training regiment and actually mean a military unit organized for training.
Should have/Should of
Could have/Could of
The only one that actually annoys me.
I've got one. "Soul/sole."
...One might not think it would be that easy to confuse the two, but my friend does it ALL THE TIME...I always get so miffed that I have to fix it for her.
3277709
Yeah, this just goes to show that even grammar nazis flub one every now and then.
3277650
3277761 Adding now.
3277665 Even so, it's worth noting.
3277712 Swastika jokes are never funny, dude.
3277760
3277774 Adding these.
A couple others, one of which I can't believe hasn't been mentioned:
You're/your. Oh god, this one. It's one of my biggest spelling peeves now.
Whose/who's: Like its/it's, the first is possessive and the second is a contraction of who is.
3277796 Your/you're was already on the list when I first published it.
That other one I had forgotten though. Adding now.
My favorite hateable homophones:
Shear/sheer
Knew/new
Currant/current
Faint/feint
Also, yore is one I've seen mixed in with you're and your like an ugly hybrid child of those words that doesn't come close to meaning either of them.
3277808 Added, thanks!
I had to try really hard to not make the 'what are you, a dictionary?' joke!
While I doubt this single blog post will make too much an impact, every little bit counts! Plus, there are a couple things even I wasn't 100% clear on, and I take my writing very seriously! ...when I do it.
3277864 Nobody's grammar nor vocabulary are perfect. All we can do is try our best to learn from our mistakes.
3277894
Very true!
After all, we are only human.
This annoys me to all ends of the earth, because we all learned the differences between these words somewhere around second grade.
I had to explain this to my English teacher in eighth grade.
There are actually people doing this?
Does no one have a thesaurus at home, or a dictionary, for that matter?
This mistake has baffled me since I could read.
I've never used this phrase in my writing other than in dialogue, so I can't imagine using it correctly would have been appropriate characterization. Still, I didn't know this. Thank you for that knowledge.
I've never seen this particular misspelling, but then I didn't know there was a fruit called a currant either.
"hanged/hung" The difference between these two doesn't seem to be common knowledge, and it should be.
Friend, I could go on all. Fucking. Day. I did not know about "Another thing coming", though. You learn something new every day, I guess!
"Definitely/defiantly" particularly chaps my ass. If I had a dollar for every time "defiantly" was used where "definitely" should have been used, I wouldn't need a job.
The its/it's thing bothers me so much.... being in school and seeing it wrong in textbooks...
dear god pls no
Pegasus, unicorn and earth pony are all common names; thus, when in the middle of a sentence, they are not capitalized. When at the beginning of a sentence, those words are capitalized.
3282619 Eh, there's a case for capitalizing them, same as Human is often capitalized in science-fiction. I usually don't nitpick over it. What I do nitpick over is inconsistent capitalization.