As we saw in my last article here, there are a lot of words that sound much the same but are spelled differently and have a different meaning.
But when we’re in a hurry to write, and when we keep thinking spellcheck will help us, it’s easy to use the wrong word and not even notice it!
Here are a few ways to help us remember which is which.
- Create a short list of those words you often mistype, like its/it’s, their/there/they’re, or to/too/ two, and refer to it often.
- If you know you often mistype a specific word, ask your computer to check for it, and even more important, always check for the other one(s), too!
- If there are only two sound-alike words, memorize ONE of them. Know exactly where and how to use it. So if that’s not the right one … just use the other one.
- Come up with fun ways to remember some, like the principal is our PAL. If that’s not right for your sentence, use principle.
- Think of a synonym that keeps the words straight, like everyday or every day.
Every day = Each day. - Than or Then? Then rhymes with When!
- Their / they’re / there? Here is hiding in There.
- Farther? Further? Do we go fur … or far? We go farther!
- And my favorite for
Affect or Effect:
Remember the RAVEN:
And for even more, here’s a website I just found with great ways to remember homonyms:
https://www.hip-books.com/teaching-struggling-readers/vocabulary-and-word-study/homophones-mnemonics/
Here’s the short form of that:
https://tinyurl.com/2h2ft2xe
You may have your own ways of remembering some pesky homophones, but I hope these few tricks also help.
Next month my focus will be changing to how to use some common punctuation marks in the American grammar system.Is there a topic you’d like to see me cover? Feel free to let me know!
