Although I suppose this sweatshirt sentiment could be correct, I’m doubtful that there are that many Arkansas girls who love Arizona–although I am sure there are some who love flip flops and wine!
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Although I suppose this sweatshirt sentiment could be correct, I’m doubtful that there are that many Arkansas girls who love Arizona–although I am sure there are some who love flip flops and wine!
It’s time for “Confusing Words of the Week” where I take a set of two or three words that get confused and give you definitions and try to give you a memory trick to help you remember when to use which word. If you have words that confuse you, use the Ask PTB tab on the website or send an email to [email protected] and they may appear here soon!
This week’s words are:
Memory tips:
This was in my Facebook Marketplace recently. Not only is “dishwasher” different in each place it is used, but the picture is not even a dishwasher. It is definitely a washing machine . . . for clothes!
I hit the jackpot again at an airport restaurant in San Diego where I found multiple errors in the menu.
Proofreading is everyone’s responsibility. I wondered how often a judge actually makes an error. Unfortunately for judges, I’m pretty sure any error they make is immediately made known and picked up by every legal news source in the country. So be thankful that unless your error is egregious or it is a slow news day, it may not be spread so far and wide!
We’ll start with the U.S. Supreme Court and some examples of errors made. Apparently, there is a website that publishes the corrections that the U.S. Supreme Court has made to correct misspellings, wrong word choices, missing words, and grammatical missteps in Supreme Court opinions. This term, according to the National Law Journal in this ABA Journal article and this Above The Law article, they include:
As much as Court watchers like to point out mistakes, sometimes the U.S. Supreme Court stands by its choices. The word “miniscule” in Justice Stephen G. Breyer’s dissent in Trump v. Hawaii was unchanged. Some think the word should be “minuscule” while others disagree, saying that “miniscule” isn’t the preferred word, but it’s not wrong.
In other courts, sometimes judges or law clerks insert reminders for things they need to follow up on and sometimes those reminders don’t get taken care of. The same can happen in any law office. This is one reason I try to highlight those notes as I see them so that as someone is scrolling through, at least it should make them slow down to see why something is highlighted. U.S. District Judge Gonzalo Curiel filed an opinion on a Motion to Dismiss with what Above the Law describes as “an uncomfortably honest assessment of the underlying research.”
Sometimes the error is not related to spelling or sentence construction, but is an error in numbers. Recently, an Oklahoma judge admitted that he made a $107 million math error in an order for Johnson & Johnson to pay $572 million in the opioid epidemic. The portion of the award devoted to a treatment program for addicted babies should have been $107,683, but in the order said $107,683,000. What’s a few zeroes between friends, eh? The number will be changed in the next version of the order.
Just know that errors happen to everyone but good proofreading skills will hopefully make those errors less likely to happen.
This was in a recent email I received. I understand it is hard to spell, but generally spell check will catch it or if there is any doubt, look it up!
I recently hit the jackpot on menu errors when I found three in the same menu. First, it appears they only offer you one brussel sprout and then they spell that wrong. It should be Brussels (named after the city of Brussels) sprout.
Then, they off a “blackend” shrimp risotto, even though they spelled it “blackened” in the description.
And finally, they offered the rainbow trout with “oyser” mushrooms. It should be “oyster” mushrooms.
It is never my intent to make fun of any establishment–just to use these errors to teach you something–so I have marked out the name of the restaurant. And regardless of the errors, the food was delicious!
While dining at a fine establishment inside our local airport, I spotted this beauty. It is made worse by the correct spelling in the next item.
A reader sent this picture to me from her local Wendy’s. Just looking at this sign, apparently, they have already filled all their positions because they WERE hiring, but now they’re not. If they are currently looking, it should be WE’RE (contraction for “we are”) hiring. Obviously, Wendy’s knows how to use apostrophes since it is part of their name.
This is an example of words that are easily confused by spell check. The correct word here should be “participate,” not “participant.”