Words for Actions, Movement, and Change
Here is a sentence that separates careful readers from fast ones: “To conserve fuel, the unit curtailed nighttime driving but did not stop it entirely.” Four verbs might look plausible as a replacement for curtailed — prohibited, postponed, redirected, reduced. Only one of them survives the second half of the sentence. Verbs about action and […]
Near Synonyms and Commonly Confused Words
Two very different problems get filed under the same heading. One is spelling-driven: accept and except sound almost identical, so people reach for the wrong one. The other has nothing to do with spelling: concise and cursory look nothing alike, but both mean short, and choosing between them requires knowing why the writing was short. […]
