Commonly Misused Words in Writing

They're / Their / There - Accept / Except - Its / It's

Yesterday, I was looking for a video to post on my blog of a particular song, and I found one on YouTube I really liked, until I watched the video, and it had the lyrics to the song typed out for the viewer to read, and this line said, "More then anything, more then anything..." and I immediately stopped viewing the video.

Why?

Because I'm an editor and grammar errors like this really get on my nerves. Are you wondering what is wrong with the line above in quotes? Well, let me tell you - the correct word is THAN not THEN. You see, than is a comparison and then is a time. One is a conjunction and one is an adverb, two completely different parts of speech, but due to their similarity in pronunciation, these two words are frequently misused.

Of course, these are not the only two words in the English language that are frequently misused due to their similar spelling or pronunciation. Believe me, even though I am a writer and an editor, I frequently have found commonly misused words used wrongly in my own writing, simply because my ear hears one thing while my head meant another.

It happens to the best of us, but there are some writers out there who regularly misuse commonly misused words, and who don't seem to know the difference.

Let's look at a few commonly misused words and some information on how to remember which word to use at the right time.

There / They're / Their

I see these words used improperly all the time, and honestly, if Americans enunciated properly, these words don't sound exactly like each other when spoken, but they are close enough when the fingers move faster than the brain that these three words are commonly misused.

There references a place - a location, or a description of where something is. Where is it? It is there. This word is most commonly used as an adverb, modifying the location of the noun it references, but it can rarely be used as a noun as well.