Of all the crimes against good writing, the worst is using the wrong word. A grammatical error looks sloppy, but as long as it doesn’t change the meaning of the sentence, people will get what you mean. Use the wrong word, though, and you fail to convey what you’re trying to say. That amounts to failing as a writer.
Usage errors fall into several categories. This isn’t an exhaustive list, but it includes the types of errors that annoy me the most.
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My writing work goes to several countries. Just in the past couple of days I’ve written for American, English, and Australian customers. Keeping the customer happy requires writing in the kind of English they want. You can’t always assume it from the country they’re in; I have a regular customer in the UK that wants American English.
Spelling is the easiest part to adjust. Britain tends to use “-ise” where Americans use “-ize,” “-our” where we use “-or,” and “-re” where we use “-er.” Australia and New Zealand generally follow Britain. Canada does sometimes, but not always.
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Good writers use words precisely. We know that we may lose things if we loose them. We know it’s a sad and messy occasion when someone literally explodes. Technical terms can be trickier to get right. They have complex definitions which not everyone understands. But they’re precise definitions, and it’s a shame to throw that precision away. Sometimes, too, people use those words to appear precise when they aren’t. That’s just another kind of imprecision. Let’s look at a few ways writers fall short of the accuracy which tech talk ought to have.
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