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CACHE/CACHET

“Cache” comes from the French verb cacher, meaning “to hide,” and in English is pronounced exactly like the word “cash.” But reporters speaking of a cache (hidden hoard) of weapons or drugs often mispronounce it to sound like cachet—“ca-SHAY” —a word with a very different meaning: originally a seal affixed to a document, now a quality attributed to anything with authority or prestige. Rolex watches have cachet.

CALL THE QUESTION

This is more a matter of parliamentary procedure than of correct English, but people are generally confused about what “calling the question” means. They often suppose that it means simply “let’s vote!” and some even imagine that it is necessary to call for the question before a vote may be taken. You even see deferential meeting chairs pleading, “Would someone like to call for the question?”
But “calling the question” when done properly should be a rare occurrence. If debate has dragged on longer than you feel is really warranted, you can “call the question,” at which time the chair has to immediately ask those assembled to vote to determine whether or not debate should be cut off or continue. The motion to call the question is itself not debatable. If two-thirds of those voting agree that the discussion should have died some time ago, they will support the call. Then, and only then, will the vote be taken on the question itself.
Potentially this parliamentary maneuver would be a great way to shut down windy speakers who insist on prolonging a discussion when a clear consensus has already been arrived at; but since so few people understand what it means, it rarely works as intended.

CALLOUS/CALLUSED

Calling someone “callous” is a way of metaphorically suggesting a lack of feeling similar to that caused by calluses on the skin; but if you are speaking literally of the tough build-up on a person’s hand or feet, the word you need is “callused.”

CALM, COOL, AND COLLECTIVE/CALM, COOL, AND COLLECTED

Unless you’re living in an unusually tranquil commune, you wouldn’t be “calm, cool, and collective.” The last word in this traditional phrase is “collected,” in the sense of such phrases as “let me sit down a minute and collect my thoughts.” If you leave out “cool” the last word still has to be “collected.”

Calvary/cavalry

“Calvary,” always capitalized, is the hill on which Jesus was crucified. It means “hill of skulls.” Soldiers mounted on horseback are cavalry.

CAN GOODS/CANNED GOODS

Is there a sign at your grocery store that says “can goods”? It should say “canned goods.”

CANNOT/CAN NOT

These two spellings are largely interchangeable, but by far the most common is “cannot” and you should probably use it except when you want to be emphatic: [b]“No, you can not wash the dog in the Maytag.”

CANON/CANNON

“Canon” used to be such a rare word that there was no temptation to confuse it with “cannon”: a large piece of artillery. The debate over the literary canon (a list of officially-approved works) and the popularity of Pachelbel’s Canon (an imitative musical form related to the common “round”) have changed all that—confusion is rampant. Just remember that the big gun is a “cannon.” All the rest are “canons.” Note that there are metaphorical uses of “cannon” for objects shaped like large guns.

CANVAS/CANVASS

Heavy cloth, whether in the frame of a painting or on the floor of a boxing ring, is canvas, with one S.

To survey ballots or voters is to canvass them, with two S’s.

CAPITAL/CAPITOL

A “capitol” is almost always a building. Cities which serve as seats of government are capitals spelled with an A in the last syllable, as are most other uses of the word as a common noun. The only exceptions are place names alluding to capitol buildings in some way or other, like “Capitol Hill” in DC, Denver, or Seattle (the latter named either after the hill in Denver or in hopes of attracting the Washington State capitol building). Would it help to remember that Congress with an O meets in the Capitol with another O?

CARAT/CARET/CARROT/KARAT

“Carrots” are those crunchy orange vegetables Bugs Bunny is so fond of, but this spelling gets misused for the less familiar words which are pronounced the same but have very different meanings. Precious stones like diamonds are weighed in carats. The same word is used to express the proportion of pure gold in an alloy, though in this usage it is sometimes spelled “karat” (hence the abbreviation “20K gold”). A caret is a proofreader’s mark showing where something needs to be inserted, shaped like a tiny pitched roof. It looks rather like a French circumflex, but is usually distinct from it on modern computer keyboards. Carets are extensively used in computer programming.

CAREEN/CAREER

A truck careening down the road is swerving from side to side as it races along, whereas a truck careering down the road may be simply traveling very fast. But because it is not often clear which meaning a person intends, confusing these two words is not likely to get you into trouble.

CARING

Most people are comfortable referring to “caring parents,” but speaking of a “caring environment” is jargon, not acceptable in formal English. The environment may contain caring people, but it does not itself do the caring.

CAST IN STONE/CAST IN CONCRETE, CARVED IN STONE

People expressing flexibility say that their ideas or rules are “not cast in concrete,” meaning they have not hardened into rigidity. You cast concrete in a mold by pouring it in and letting it set; so the expression can also be “not set in concrete.”

A similar expression is “not carved in stone”.

People frequently mix these two expressions up and say things like “It’s not cast in stone.”


CD-ROM disk/CD-ROM

“CD-ROM” s tands for “compact disc, read-only memory,” so adding another “disc” or “disk” is redundant. The same goes for “DVD” (from “Digital Video Disc” or “Digital Versatile Disc"”—there are non-video versions). Don’t say “give me that DVD disk,” just “give me that DVD.”


CEASAR/CAESAR

Did you know that German “Kaiser” is derived from the Latin “Caesar” and is pronounced a lot more like it than the English version? We’re stuck with our illogical pronunciation, so we have to memorize the correct spelling. (The Russians messed up the pronunciation as thoroughly as the English, with their “Czar.”) Thousands of menus are littered with “Ceasar salads” throughout America which should be “Caesar salads”—named after a restaurateur, not the Roman ruler (but they both spelled their names the same way).


CEMENT/CONCRETE

People in the building trades distinguish cement (the gray powder that comes in bags) from concrete (the combination of cement, water, sand, and gravel which becomes hard enough in your driveway to drive your car on). In contexts where technical precision matters, it’s probably better to speak of a “concrete sidewalk” rather than of a “cement sidewalk.”


CENSOR/CENSURE/SENSOR/CENSER

To censor somebody’s speech or writing is to try to suppress it by preventing it from reaching the public. When guests on network TV utter obscenities, broadcasters practice censorship by bleeping them.

To censure someone, however, is to officially denounce an offender. You can be censured as much for actions as for words. A lawyer who destroyed evidence which would have been unfavorable to his client might be censured by the bar association.

A device which senses any change like changes in light or electrical output is a sensor. Your car and your digital camera contain sensors.

A censer is a church incense burner.


CENTER AROUND/CENTER ON, REVOLVE AROUND

Two perfectly good expressions—“center on” and “revolve around”—get conflated in this nonsensical neologism. When a speaker says his address will “center around the topic of” whatever, my interest level plummets.


CENTER OF ATTRACTION/CENTER OF ATTENTION

“Center of attraction” makes perfect sense, but the standard phrase is “center of attention.”


CENTS

On a sign displaying a cost of twenty-nine cents for something the price can be written as “.29,” as “$.29,” or as “29¢,” but don’t combine the two forms. “.29¢” makes no sense, and “$.29¢” is worse.


CHAI TEA/CHAI

Chai is simply the word for “tea” in Hindi and several other Asian languages. The spicy, milky variety known in India as masala chai is called “chai” in the US Since Americans likely to be attracted by the word “chai” already know it’s a tea-based drink, it’s both redundant and pointless to call the product “chai tea.”


CHALK-FULL/CHOCK-FULL, CHUCK-FULL

Originally a person or thing stuffed to the point of choking was “choke-full.” In modern speech this expression has become “chock-full,” or in less formal American English, “chuck-full.” Chalk has nothing to do with it.


CHAMPAIGN/CHAMPAGNE

Champaign is the name of a city and county in Illinois.

Champagne is a region of France that produces the sparkling wine of this name.


CHECK/CZECH

Pronounce the name of the country which broke away from the former Czechoslovakia to form the Czech Republic as “check,” but don’t spell it that way. Its citizens are Czechs.


CHICANO/LATINO/HISPANIC

“Chicano” means “Mexican-American,” and not all the people denoted by this term like it. When speaking of people living in the U.S. from various other Spanish-speaking countries, “Chicano” is an error for “Latino” or “Hispanic.” Only “Hispanic” can include people with a Spanish as well as with a Latin American heritage; and some people of Latin American heritage object to it as ignoring the Native American element in that population. Only “Latino” could logically include Portuguese-speaking Brazilians, though that is rarely done.


CHRISPY/CRISPY

There are a lot of menus, signs, and recipes out there featuring “chrispy chicken.” Is this misspelling influenced by the “CH” in “chicken” or the pattern in other common words like “Christmas”? At any rate, the proper spelling is “crispy.”


CHOOSE/CHOSE

You chose tequila last night; you choose aspirin this morning. “Chose” is the past tense, “choose” the present.


CHUNK/CHUCK

In casual conversation, you may get by with saying “Chuck [throw] me that monkey wrench, will you?” But you will mark yourself as illiterate beyond mere casualness by saying instead “Chunk me that wrench.” This is a fairly common substitution in some dialects of American English.


CHURCH

Catholics routinely refer to their church as the Church, with a capital “C.” This irritates the members of other churches, but is standard usage. When “Church” stands by itself (that is, not as part of a name like “First Methodist Church”) you should normally capitalize it only to mean “Roman Catholic Church.” Note that protestant theologians and other specialists in religion do refer to the whole body of Christians as “the Church,” but this professional usage is not common in ordinary writing.


CITE/SITE/SIGHT

You cite the author in an endnote; you visit a Web site or the site of the crime, and you sight your brother running toward you in slow motion.


CLASSIC/CLASSICAL

“Classical” usually describes things from ancient Greece or Rome, or things from analogous ancient periods like classical Sanskrit poetry. The exception is classical music, which in the narrow sense is late 18th- and 19th-century music by the likes of Mozart, Haydn, and Beethoven, and in the broader sense formal concert music of any period in the West or traditional formal music from other cultures, like classical ragas.

“Classic” has a much looser meaning, describing things that are outstanding examples of their kind, like a classic car or even a classic blunder.


CLEANUP/CLEAN UP

“Cleanup” is usually a noun: “the cleanup of the toxic waste site will cost billions of dollars.” “Clean” is a verb in the phrase “clean up”: “You can go to the mall after you clean up your room.”

CLICK/CLIQUE

Students lamenting the division of their schools into snobbish factions often misspell “clique” as “click.” In the original French, “clique” was synonymous with “claque”—an organized group of supporters at a theatrical event who tried to prompt positive audience response by clapping enthusiastically.


CLOSE/CLOTHES

Because the TH in “clothes” is seldom pronounced distinctly, it is often misspelled “close.” Just remember the TH in “clothing,” where it is obvious. Clothes are made of cloth. Rags can also be cloths (without an E).


CLOSE PROXIMITY/CLOSE, IN PROXIMITY TO

A redundancy: “in proximity to” means “close to.”


CLOSED-MINDED/CLOSE-MINDED

“Closed-minded” might seem logical, but the traditional spelling of this expression is “close-minded.” The same is true for “close-lipped” and “close-mouthed.”


COARSE/COURSE

“Coarse” is always an adjective meaning “rough, crude.” Unfortunately, this spelling is often mistakenly used for a quite different word, “course,” which can be either a verb or a noun (with several different meanings).


COFFEE CLUTCH/COFFEE KLATSCH, COFFEE KLATCH

“Coffee klatsch” comes from German Kafeeklatsch meaning “coffee chat.” This is a compound word of which only one element has been translated, with the other being left in its original German spelling.

Many people anglicize the spelling further to “coffee klatch” or “coffee clatch.” Either one is less sophisticated than “coffee klatsch,” but not too likely to cause raised eyebrows.

“Coffee clutch” is just a mistake except when used as a deliberate pun to label certain brands of coffee-cup sleeves or to name a cafe.


COLD SLAW/COLE SLAW

The popular salad made of shredded cabbage was originally “cole slaw,” from the Dutch for “cabbage salad.” Because it is served cold, Americans have long supposed the correct spelling to be “cold slaw”; but if you want to sound more sophisticated go with the original.


COLLABORATE/CORROBORATE

People who work together on a project collaborate (share their labor); people who support your testimony as a witness corroborate (strengthen by confirming) it.


COLLAGE/COLLEGE

You can paste together bits of paper to make a collage, but the institution of higher education is a college.


COLOMBIA/COLUMBIA

Although both are named after Columbus, the U.S. capital is the District of Columbia, whereas the South American country is Colombia.


COME WITH

In some American dialects it is common to use the phrase “come with” without specifying with whom, as in “We’re going to the party. Want to come with?” This sounds distinctly odd to the majority of people, who would expect “come with us.”


COMPANY NAMES WITH APOSTROPHES

Some company names which have a possessive form use an apostrophe before the S and some don’t: “McDonald’s” does and “Starbucks” doesn’t. “Macy’s” idiosyncratically uses a star for its apostrophe. Logo designers often feel omitting the apostrophe leads to a cleaner look, and there’s nothing you can do about it except to remember which is standard for a particular company. But people sometimes informally add an S to company names with which they are on familiar terms: “I work down at the Safeway’s now” (though in writing, the apostrophe is likely to be omitted). This is not standard usage.


COMPARE AND CONTRAST/COMPARE

Here’s a chance to catch your English teacher in a redundancy! To compare two things is to note their similarities and their differences. There’s no need to add “and contrast.”


COMPARE TO/COMPARE WITH

These are sometimes interchangeable, but when you are stressing similarities between the items compared, the most common word is “to”: “She compared his home-made sweater to factory ones.” If you are examining both similarities and differences, use “with”: “The teacher compared Steve’s exam with Robert’s to see whether they had cheated.”

COMPLEMENT/COMPLIMENT

Originally these two spellings were used interchangeably, but they have come to be distinguished from each other in modern times. Most of the time the word people intend is “compliment": nice things said about someone ("She paid me the compliment of admiring the way I shined my shoes.”). “Complement,” much less common, has a number of meanings associated with matching or completing. Complements supplement each other, each adding something the others lack.


COMPLEMENTARY/COMPLIMENTARY

When paying someone a compliment like “I love what you’ve done with the kitchen!” you’re being complimentary. A free bonus item is also a complimentary gift. But items or people that go well with each other are complementary.

In geometry, complementary angles add up to 90°, whereas supplementary ones add up to 180°.

COMPRISED OF/COMPOSED OF

Although “comprise” is used primarily to mean “to include,” it is also often stretched to mean “is made up of”—a meaning that some critics object to. The most cautious route is to avoid using “of” after any form of “comprise” and substitute “is composed of” in sentences like this: “Jimmy’s paper on Marxism was composed entirely of sentences copied off the Marx Brothers Home Page.”


CONCENSUS/CONSENSUS

You might suppose that this word had to do with taking a census of the participants in a discussion, but it doesn’t. It is a good old Latin word that has to do with arriving at a common sense of the meeting, and the fourth letter is an “S.”


CONCERNING/WORRISOME, TROUBLING

People commonly say of things that are a cause for concern that they are “concerning”: “My brother's affection for his pet rattlesnake is concerning.” This is not standard English. There are many better words that mean the same thing including “worrisome,” “troubling,” and “alarming.”

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Marwatone.