Homophones

After reading through, “Homonyms, Homophone, Spell-Checks, Oh My!” I realized how easy it is to mix up similar-sounding words. If you are writing quickly or in the zone, and you misuse a word it could look pretty bad. That introduces my editing mistake for the week because a friend of mine misused a homophone. She posted on Facebook, “It has been a rough week, but I am getting threw it!” This simple mix up is understandable, but “threw” and “through” have very different meanings.

To me, this would be a very embarrassing mistake, and I would delete or edit the post as soon as I realized. It is just a reminder that even the most obvious things can slip past your eye, and become published.

When I am trying to differentiate between words, like the ones in our “right words” exercise, I always visualize the sentence it is being used in. I think about the spelling and the way it was used, then apply it to the sentence I am questioning. This works for me because I am a very visual learner.

 If I still can’t determine which usage is correct, then I will write both out and look at them next to each other. At that point if I still am struggling, it is time to consult a dictionary. My dictionary is a quick Google search that lets me know the spelling and part of speech the word is used as. There is nothing wrong with double checking yourself if you are a little unsure, even if it seems like an obvious choice.