The Big List Of Booboos And Blunders / H to N

• "H₂O" (the chemical formula for water)—the final "O" is an uppercase letter, not a number (except in Look Around You, but Elements Do Not Work That Way). The same goes for C-3PO.
  • And O₂, and N₂O. (Protip: On This Very Wiki it's [[subscript:blah]] for subscript, and [[superscript:blah]] for superscript.
  • The fissile isotope of uranium is ²³⁵U, not U235 (nor U₂₃₅). However even scientists get this wrong all the time. Again, the lack of availability of superscript is an issue here, as well as the usual way of pronouncing it (which goes roughly "U-235"—incidentally, the most acceptable way to write it in the absence of superscript).
• "Hail" (as a noun, frozen rain; as a verb, to come from somewhere, to call to someone or to praise someone) vs. "hale" (as an adjective, strong and healthy; as a verb, to drag someone). A hale criminal may be haled into court in the town he hails from, but he won't expect to be hailed when he arrives (though it may well be hailing).
• "hand and hand", an eggcorn for the phrase "hand in hand" (which means "in close association")
• "hanger" (that thing you put your clothes on) for "hangar" (where you keep your zeppelins, planes, and helicopters)
• "hansom" (a horse-drawn taxi) for "handsome" (good looking)
• The genitive of the masculine pronoun is "his". Not "he's". The latter (as a genitive, rather than as a contraction of "he is") is only found in certain dialects, yet it is not uncommon to see people writing "he's" in a non-dialect context as if they think that's really what the word is.
• "heal" (get better) for "heel" (back bottom of your foot)
• "Here, here!" for "Hear, hear!" an eggcorn found in the first paragraph of this article in ESPN The Magazine, which supposedly employs editors. Enjoy the extra "i" in signify and the erroneous apostrophe in "Awards" at no extra cost!
• "heroin" (a drug) for "heroine" (a female protagonist), seen a lot in Fan Fiction summaries.
  • An article on BreakTheChain.org makes the opposite mistake.
• "hey-stack" (a pile of shouted greetings) for "haystack" (a pile of hay), a misspelling that appeared right here on the Wiki, on Tropes Examined By The Myth Busters.
• "high and dry" (disconnected, left out of the loop) and "home and dry" (safe, or in a sense of conclusion) get mixed up sometimes.
• "high jack" (an elevated device for raising cars) for "hijack" (to take over something). Then there's "Hi, Jack!", which is what you say when meeting someone named Jack.
• "Hysterical" (losing control of one's emotions) vs "hilarious" (very funny). Comedians are sometimes described as hysterical, which would only make sense if said comedians are having some kind of mental breakdown.
• "hole" (a gap, pit or aperture) vs. "whole" (all of something). There was graffiti referring to someone as an "arsewhole", leaving the viewer to wonder whether being the entirety of someone's backside was worse than simply being its associated orifice.
• "hologram" for any type of stereogram. A hologram is specifically the kind of stereogram which records and replays the wavefront emitted by the object; other types of stereogram, which use two (or sometimes more) separate (2D) images to create the 3D effect, are most decidedly not holograms. An example is the 3-disc Special Collectors' Edition of AVATAR sold at Tesco (UK) stores, which includes a pack of four so-called "hologram" art cards which are actually parallax stereograms.
• And while we're on the subject; "holograph" for "hologram". A holograph is a document entirely written by the person who signed it.
  • Annoyingly, however, the art and practice of making holograms is called "holography" by analogy with "photography": the art and practice of making photographs; photograms, meanwhile are produced by a specific type of photographic technique.
• "holy" (sacred) vs. "wholly" (completely, absolutely). Kipling punningly used both versions—correctly—in one of his poems: "Holy People, however it runs, Endeth in Wholly Slave." Similarly, the Discordians have "To diverse gods/Do mortals bow:/Holy cow/And Wholly Chao."
• "hollowed" (having its interior scooped out) vs. "hallowed" (holy, revered, honored). Oh, and "Deathly Hollows"? They're holes that will kill you. The reverse also applies—it's not "Godric's Hallow" unless the entire town has been consecrated.
  • And it's ''Hollow'' Bastion, not Hallow Bastion (seen far too many times in various places). It means that the place is empty (well, aside from all the Heartless), not that it's sacred.
• Homo sapiens is not a plural, it's the official name for Earth's dominant clothed primate species. It means "wise man". So referring to yourself or anyone else as a "homo sapien" is incorrect.
• "horde" (a mob) vs. "hoard" (a large cache of treasure, or to collect and preserve something obsessively)
• "horse" (an animal) for "hoarse" (having a croaky voice)
• "hostler" (a person employed to look after the horses at an inn) and "holster" (an apparatus for carrying a gun)
• "hover" (to stay in one place while airborne, or to stay close to someone) vs. "hoover" (noun, a vacuum cleaner, especially one made by the Hoover company; verb, to use a vacuum cleaner)
• "hungry" (possessed of the urge to eat) vs. "Hungary" (a country)
• "hung" (the act of having put something up on a wall) vs. "hanged" (the act of dangling a person by the neck until dead, often used as a form of execution). Crops up in A Song of Ice and Fire: "Your father was not a tapestry, dear."
  • Though it is is correct to say (for example) "He hung from the edge of the cliff by his fingers"
• "hypercritical" (extremely critical) vs. "hypocritical" (to object to others doing something you yourself do).
• "hypocritical" vs. "hypocratical" (not a word, but could possibly be a mangled form of "Hippocratic", i.e. the oath doctors take).
  • Hypocritical Humour is hypocrisy-related comedy. Hippocratical humour, if it meant anything, would be jokes related to the medical profession.
• "hypocritical" vs. "hypothetical" (based on a conjecture). Never, ever talk or write about a "hypocritical situation" when you mean a hypothetical one. And goodness knows what Hypothetical Humour would be. A comical hypothesis, or a discussion on what jokes would be suitable in a certain setting, perhaps?
  • SF Debris submits that all humor in "The Outrageous Okona" is hypothetical humor... presumed to exist, but no evidence of it has thus far been found.
• A "hypothetical" question is one where you are presenting false (or supposedly false) information, and you are asking someone what if this false information were true. A "rhetorical" question is one where you do not expect an actual answer. Examples: "What would you do if X were true?" is a hypothetical question. "You aren't really going to wear that, are you?" is a rhetorical question.
• "-idge" for "-age"—beveridge, leveridge, adidge (or just adige) and so on.
• "I.e." does not mean "in example" (which should be obvious, as that isn't even a phrase; the English is "for example"). It is short for Latin id est, translated as "that is." This is used for clarification of a previous phrasing, i.e., to restate something in terms easier to understand. If you want to give an example then use "e.g." (exempli gratia, translated as "for the sake of example").
  • Also, both of them get a period after each letter, and usually a comma after the second period: "i.e." and "e.g.", not "ie.", "i.e", "eg.", or "e.g".
  • "A.K.A." for either i.e. or e.g. A.K.A. stands for "Also Known As," and while nothing prevents it from applying to terminology, it's generally understood to refer to people, as in "Prince, A.K.A. The Purple One, A.K.A. The Artist Formerly Known As Prince." A.K.A. is used in roughly the same context as "alias," though "alias" implies more nefarious purpose behind having many names.
• "illicit" (illegal, immoral or otherwise under-the-counter) for "elicit" (encourage or motivate)
• "illusion" (seeing something [that is actually there] wrongly) vs. "hallucination" ("seeing" something that isn't there). George Orwell got this one wrong in his essay on seaside postcards.
• "immigrate" (moving into a location) and "emigrate" (moving out of a location). Same with derived forms like immigration/emigration, immigrant/emigrant, etc.
• "imminently" (in a manner that is about to happen) vs. "eminently" (usually meaning "extraordinarily good for" or "better than most at") vs. "immanently" (existing within, inherent).
• "impetuous" (having low impulse control) for "impetus" (inspiration or motive for doing something)
• "improving" (progressively getting better) vs. "improvising" (coming up with ideas and plans on the spur of the moment). Although this one smells of a spellchecker "correction".
• "in between" is correct, whereas "inbetween" is not despite cropping up everywhere. "in-between" is the version when used as an adjective (eg. "After doing the exam but before getting the results, there's the awful in-between stage").
• "incest" (sleeping with your relatives) vs. "insect" (a small invertebrate). These two should never be confused. Ever.
• "incongruent" (not congruent) for "incongruous" (standing out; lacking harmony with [figurative]). To be fair, some dictionaries list "incongruent" as a word meaning "incongruous".
• "in fact" is, in fact, two words.
• "infinitesimal" (so little as to be almost non-existent) for "infinite" (absolutely limitless).
  • "Infinite" itself is misused. Although Georg Cantor showed that one number can be more infinite than another (for example, the number of complex numbers vs. the number of integers), a number cannot be "almost infinite"—it either is or isn't.
• "in a tether" (within a rope tied to something), an eggcorn for "in a dither" (seized by a whirlwind of emotion).
• "inciteful" (provocative, troublemaking) for "insightful" (perceptive, understanding)—probably an eggcorn and extremely common.
• "inequity" (lack of fairness or justice) vs. "iniquity" (something sinful or wicked). Inequity may be iniquity, and iniquity may involve inequity, but they're not the same word.
• "infer" as a synonym for "imply". When something is implied, it is suggested without being explicitly stated. To infer is to conclude or pick something up that has not been explicitly stated. From the way he repeatedly implied that she enjoyed murdering puppies, I inferred his dislike for her.
  • If you're not sure you're using these two correctly, replace "implied" with "hinted" and "inferred" with "gathered" and see whether the sentence still makes sense.
• "inforce" for "enforce". Enforcing is the act of making sure a certain thing or policy is used or adhered to, possibly quite strongly. Inforcing is not a word. "In force", two words, would mean having a great deal of numbers or support. "Reinforce" is to strengthen something. One could enforce in force with reinforcements.
• "intact" means something is in one piece. "In tact" is not standard English, but could be a synonym for "tactfully". And then there's the just plain wrong "in tacked", which if it meant anything might mean something tacked to a wall.
• "intension" (a term used mainly in linguistics and philosophy, understood by people in those fields and virtually no one else) vs. "intention" (something you intend to do). The first word is so rare that if it appears at all it's almost certainly a typo for the second word.
• "inter-" (between) for "intra-" (within).
• "Internet" (the globe-spanning network of physical computers and routers that communicate using the Internet Protocol) vs "(worldwide) web" (the system of interlinked hyepertext resources, such as this very wiki, which are served via Hypertext Transfer Protocol.)
• "interrupt" (break into the middle of) for "interpret" (translate, render meaningful). This has the look of a spellchecker "fix" for a particularly bad typo.
• "into" vs. "in to". This is a very complicated subject, but generally speaking "into" is a preposition that tells where someone or something is.
  • An easy way to tell whether you want "into" or "in to": pause between "in" and "to". If it sounds right, use "in to". If not, use "into".
• "inveigh" (to protest against) vs "inveigle" (to manipulate or persuade.)
• "isle" (a small, isolated outcrop of land in the middle of a body of water) vs. "aisle" (a passage between two rows of objects) vs. "I'll" (contraction of "I shall/will").
• "it's" (short form of "it is") for "its" (something belonging to it).
  • Pronouns don't use apostrophes for possessives, but rather special forms (he/his, she/hers, me/mine, you/yours, they/theirs). "It" is a pronoun, and "its" is the special possessive form. ("One" is the sole exception; its possessive, "one's", does have the apostrophe.)
• For that matter, "it's" for "is". This one gives Spanish speakers a lot of trouble (the Spanish word "es" means both "it's" and "is").
• "Jack-o-Lantern" (a type of lantern carved from a pumpkin) vs "Jackal Lantern" (a lamp used to scare off wild dogs, presumably.) Thankfully not a very common mistake, although this site lists a couple instances.
• "just desserts" instead of "just deserts"; the term "desert(s)" in this meaning (Etymology 1 here) is otherwise little-used outside ethical philosophy and the theory of criminal law.
• "Kaleidoscope" (a tube that lets you see pretty shapes) vs "collidoscope" (a device that lets you see collisions, presumably.)
• "kernel" is a small hail, nugget or core of operating system, "kernal" is a no-word and "colonel" is a military rank.
• "Klu Klux Klan" (wrong) vs "Ku Klux Klan" (not wrong). This is a very common mistake, likely because the right way is hard to pronounce and it seems odd that the first word lacks an L when the other two have it.
• The YouTube automatic English subtitle generator often makes mistakes, but one of the most amusing is "koala" for "quoll". Though they are both marsupials, they are very different; a koala is similar to (and often mistaken for) a bear, whilst a quoll is more like a spotted rat.
• "Knave" (a Slimeball or other untrustworthy person} vs "nave" (the central "aisle" of a church between the rows of pews.)
• "lady" seems an easy word to spell at first, but be careful how many "d"'s you write in it, because "laddy" is a man.
• "lair" (a hiding-place, usually belonging to a villain) vs. "liar" (person who tells lies). Probably caused by typing letters in the wrong order rather than actually mistaking these words for each other.
• "laissez-faire" (a policy of government non-intervention, from the French meaning "allow to do [something]") has been misspelled so many times in so many different ways (the eggcorn "lazy fair" is common) on the official forum for the 4X game Victoria: An Empire Under The Sun that one member maintains a list of spellings he's seen.
  • For those wondering, the pronunciation is roughly "less-ay fair".
• "Lassie" is a girl. "Laddie" is a boy. And, by the way, "Lassie" is not a dog breed - she was a Rough Collie. And a boy.
• "last" (at the end of something) vs. "lost" (something misplaced or someone in unfamiliar surroundings).
• "latter" (the second of two things) is often wrongly used as if it meant "the thing just mentioned". And if there's more than two things, you say "last", just as you can have the bigger of two things, but the biggest of more than two.
• Also "latter" vs. "later". Consider the Boer (1899–1902) and Crimean (1853–1856) Wars. The latter began in the Balkans, but the later was in South Africa.
• "lactose intolerant" (being allergic to lactose) versus "lack-toast intolerant" (not being able to stand going without toast, presumably) or "lack toast and tolerant" (not having toast and being fine with it?). Possibly eggcorns, though more likely spell-check or text-to-speech mistakes, given how little sense the wrong versions make.
• "lay" versus "lie". In the present tense, "lay" is a transitive verb (except when it's used to mean "have sex with") while "lie" is intransitive, therefore, one speaks of laying something down but of lying down. (Example: He went to lay the cloths on the table. vs. He decided to lie down for a while.) However, while the past tense of "lay" is "laid", the past tense of "lie" is "lay".
• "leach" (verb, to percolate, usually through something) for "leech" (noun, a bloodsucking worm).
• "leak" (a release of something that shouldn't have been) vs. "leek" (a vegetable, sometimes spun).
• "leary" (a name, as in Timothy Leary) for "leery" (wary or suspicious).
  • Also "leery" vs. "lairy" (drunkenly aggressive).
• "least" (smallest, most insignificant) for "lest" (for fear that/so that one should not)
• "lest" also often gets used as a synonym for "unless," when it actually means almost the opposite.
• Someone is "Lebanese" if they come from Lebanon. Someone is a "lesbian" if she is attracted exclusively to other women. Someone is "Lesbian" (always with a capital "L") if they are from Lesbos (although this is an uncommon usage nowadays to avoid confusion with the sexuality; they would be more likely described as "Greek".)
• "led" (past tense of "to lead") and "lead" (soft, heavy dark grey metal). One park sign in South London says "Dogs must be lead"; presumably, iron dogs are not allowed.
• "lesbian" (sentence case) is a woman who prefers other women; this is a metonym. It is sometimes written as "Lesbian" (title case), but doing so makes it an eponym for a person from the Mediterranean Isle of Lesbos.
• "lei line" (a series of Polynesian flower necklaces) or "lay line" (not sure, but probably NSFW) for "Ley Line" (a natural path of magical or magnetic energy)
• Similar to the "hologram" example above, "lenticular" also suffers abuse in stereoscopy; it originally referred (correctly) to Oliver Wendell Holmes' refinement of the Wheatstone viewer to allow both images to be printed side-by-side on the same card, allowing for easy and cheap mass production (and eliminating alignment problems), but has come to be another term for parallax stereograms, although those direct each image to its proper eye using a grid of lines, not lenses as such.
• "Lesion" (scar tissue) versus "liaison" (a designated contact person) versus "lessen/lesson" (see below). This mistake was made on the Pixar Wiki, with "lesion" being used for "lesson".
• "lesson" (a period of education) vs. "lessen" (reduce in quantity or intensity).
• "let's" (contraction for "let us") vs. "lets" (allows).
• "lightening" (increasing the brightness level or reducing the weight) or "lighting" (sources of light) for "lightning" (bolt from the blue).
• "liquorish", an eggcorn for "licorice".
  • Or meaning something which is akin to an alcoholic beverage.
  • Note that in Commonwealth English it's spelled "liquorice".
• "Lip singing" for "lip syncing." This one is another eggcorn, as it technically makes sense. Lip syncing involves moving the lips to make it look like a person is singing.
• "literal" (real) vs. "literate" (able to read) vs. "literature" (what you read). Confusing the last two is understandable, especially if a spell-checker is involved, but using the first one to mean either of them makes no sense at all.
• "literally" means something actually happened. "He literally froze" is right (but raises questions on which meaning of "froze" is being used). "His eyes literally stood out on stalks" is wrong, unless you're talking about an alien.
• "loathe" (a verb meaning "feel hatred or disgust for") vs. "loath" (an adjective meaning "reluctant or unwilling"). If you loathe boats, you'd be loath to go on a cruise.
• "loop" (a circle or circular motion) for "loupe" (a kind of magnifying glass, used by jewelers) or "loup" (French for "wolf").
• "loose" (not tight, or to release) for "lose" (not win, or to misplace, or to shake off pursuit).
• "Low and behold" for "lo and behold". A simple case of not knowing or remembering the homophone "lo", which means essentially the same thing as "behold".
• "LSD" (lysergic acid diethylamine, a hallucinogen) for "LCD" (liquid crystal display, a type of monitor). No, if you break open a Game Boy, you won't get drugs. Neither is to be confused with "LDS" for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the largest of the Mormon denominations.
  • Unless, like Spock, you took too much LDS in the 1960s.
• "lunge" (leap forward suddenly) vs. "lounge" (lay around comfortably).
• "macaroon" (a cookie of italian origin whose best-known variation in the US is coconut-based and dipped in chocolate, and popular in the southern US) vs. "macaron" (a delicate French sandwich cookie that looks like a tiny Pretty Patty).
• A "maelstrom" is a very powerful whirlpool, one that can (according to The Little Mermaid or Edgar Allan Poe) suck entire ships down. "Mealstorm" is not a word, unless a food fight got wildly out of hand. A "malestorm" means It's Raining Men.
• "Mahjong" for "Shanghai". Let's get our terms straight; Mahjong is a 19th-century Chinese game for four players, Shanghai is a tile-matching videogame (played with Mahjong tiles, but there the resemblance ends). This can be very frustrating for those seeking to buy a Mahjong game online, as nearly all so-called "Mahjong" games are actually Shanghai, and the error isn't always apparent from the description. (If a boxed game is bought from a store, the box usually has one or more screenshots, and the nature of the game is evident from those.)
• "make due" (force a deadline to expire immediately) for "make do" (improvise with available materials)
• "manic" (wildly energetic) vs. "maniac" (a lunatic). The trope is Manic Pixie Dream Girl. A Maniac Pixie Dream Girl would be a dark deconstruction. However, the phrase "manic laughter" could probably apply to a maniac.
• "manna" (food from Heaven) for "mana" (the raw energy of magic).
• "manikin" for "mannequin". The former is a very small man or one of those desktop posable models used by artists; the latter is full-sized and used to display clothing. The words have the same Dutch origin, but "mannequin" spent time in France along the way where the meaning changed significantly.
• "manor" (a house or estate) vs. "manner" (a way of doing something).
  • Someone of aristocratic birth is said to be either "to the manner born" (the original phrase from Shakespeare was historically used to mean "raised from birth to a particular way of doing something" but came to mean "of the aristocracy"), or "to the manor born" (a 19th century coinage); as such people often live in manors, this confusion was punningly referenced by BBC sitcom To the Manor Born.
• "mantel" (an ornamental structure above and around a fireplace) vs. "mantle" (something that covers, envelops or conceals; a long, sleeveless cloak; a layer of earth between crust and core; or the glowing element of a gas lamp). Of course, all five of these meanings come from the idea of "enclosure" (a fireplace's mantel surrounds it, a planet's mantle surrounds the core, a gas mantle surrounds the flame...).
• "marsala" (an Italian wine) for "masala" (an Indian spice mix), common among British people who pronounce the two identically.
• "mash potatoes" (potatoes made from a slurry of barley malt and water), a misspelling of "mashed potatoes" (potatoes that are, well, mashed). Linguistic note: In British English, "mash" is acceptable as an abbreviation of "mashed potatoes", e.g. "bangers and mash".
• "material arts" for "martial arts". The former might describe wood carving or pottery but not the art of fighting! Seen too many times in German Ranma fan-fiction.
  • See also: "Marital arts." In common parlance, anything described as marital (marital aid, marital bed, marital chambers, etc.) all refer to one thing. Specifically, keeping your spouse happy. In bed. Using your penis.
    • This was played with in one Discworld novel, in which the newlywed (and painfully shy) King of Lancre accidentally got a martial arts book instead of the marital arts book he'd intended to order. Still, it made the guy who was the sole member of the Lancrean Army happy...
  • Likewise, not marshal arts—they are skills for organizing and leading things and events.
  • In German fanfic? In German one would say Kampfkunst or Kampfsport.
• "maroon" (to be left alone in a dangerous situation, originally on an island) and "moron" (someone of whom you have a low opinion)
  • This one can often be laid at the feet of Bugs Bunny, because of his penchant for the odd malaprop. ("What a maroon!")
    • Also: "morans"◊.
    • "Maroon" is also term referring to runaway slaves and ethnic groups that originated with runaway slaves[1], in addition to a color. Eastern Kentucky University had to change the name of its sports team from "The Maroons" (maroon is one of the school colors) to "The Colonels" as a direct result of this.
• "marquis" (a title of nobility of hereditary rank) and "marquee" (an outdoor covering or sign on such a covering; an outdoor sign illuminated by flashing lights; by extension a flashing border [as in computer graphics]) The two words share a similar French derivation; the noble title is spelled as in French while the sign/border is spelled phonetically. Pronunciation is the same.
  • There was here an example of a sports writer who used "marquis" when apparently intending "marquee"—but he used it as an adjective implying a team was especially notable, i.e. (probably) "worthy of being billed on a marquee". It's not clear whether this adjectival form is grammatically correct. "Marque" with a single 'e' is a designation and pronounced the same as "mark".
• "Marshal" is the military / law enforcement title. "Marshall" is a proper name.
  • And please, karate and kung fu are not "marshal arts," even if it's pronounced the same.
• It's "Martial Law" when the military is put in place of civil government; Marshal Law is a Pat Mills comic book character.
• "Mastermind" (a really smart person) Despite this word techinically being a compliment, it's almost always used in a negative light for some reason (such as "The mastermind behind the terrorist attack"). While such usage isn't technically wrong, the word is in reality a lot more versatile than that.
• "may" for "might." This is complicated because the two genuinely are interchangeable in many circumstances. But if you want to suggest something could have happened in the past, but didn't, then it's "might" every time. Thus "If only the ambulance had arrived sooner, the man might have survived," is correct, and tells us the man died, whereas "If only the ambulance had arrived sooner, the man may have survived," is impossible, as it suggests there is somehow still doubt as to whether he survived or not.
  • This, of course, is assuming that there's a selective form of zombification in the work in question, in which case "may" could possibly be correct. It'd still be weird even in this case, though.
• "may be" for "maybe". Both definitions are close and sound the same, the former is a verb phrase meaning "might be" or "could be" and the latter is an adverb meaning "perhaps" or "possibly." "Maybe I will go out tonight," and "I may be going out tonight" are examples of their correct usages.
• Mediaeval / mediæval and medieval are acceptable spellings of the word used to describe something from the Middle Ages. It isn't, however, spelt medievil. That would be something nasty from the Middle Ages.
• Similar to the "persons" vs "people" example, both "mediums" and "media" are considered real words. For whatever reason, "mediums" is the preferred term for "more than one person with Psychic Powers" and "media" is the preferred word for "more than one art form".
• "Menstruation" (a woman's monthly bleeding) for "ministrations" (administration). Shows up in many a bad Lemon.
• "Micheal" for "Michael." The name in English is always "Michael"; the "-el" bit at the end is one of Hebrew circumlocutions around the Name of God (the whole name means "Who is like God?"). There is a limited circumstance in which "Micheal" is almost correct: the Irish-language form of the name is Micheál (note the accent), approximately pronounced "Mi-khawl".
  • But note that the Renaissance artist Michelangelo is not "Michaelangelo" even if pronunciation suggests the latter.
• "mid-air" vs. "midair". A subtle (and really picky) difference between American and British English that gets misused by BOTH communities. "Mid-air" is the American version and is used to describe a point or region in the air. "Midair" is the British version that describes some point above ground level in the air.
• "middle ages" (500 AD through 1500 AD in Europe) for "middle age" (36 through 55 years in people)
• "mien" as a synonym for "face". "Mien" means someone's bearing, their countenance, the general look of them. Aragorn might have a noble mien, but he'll certainly never have a smile on his mien. (As if to confuse matters, the actual Mandarin Chinese word for "face" is "miàn".)
• "Mindsight" for "mindset." This is another perfect eggcorn.
• "Minister" (a person who has a particular position within certain organisations) and "minster" (a type of church often associated with Northern England). "Minstrel" is a musician, "ministerialis" is a servant knight.
• "Minus" (and likewise "times") as a verb. If you want to know what six less than seven is, you subtract. The expression would be read "seven minus six". By analogy, saying "times six by seven" is like saying "divided by six by seven", which makes no sense.
  • Similarly, there is some debate between those who claim that referring to a subtraction operation such as 12-7 as a "sum" is incorrect and should be called a "difference," and those who argue that since subtraction is just the addition of a negative number to some other number, 12-7 is still a sum. (However, referring to a multiplication or division problem as a "sum", although common, is wrong; the correct terms are "product" and "quotient" respectively.)
• "Minute" vs. "minuet". One's a measure of time, the other's a dance. If you say something is only five minuets from somewhere, you're saying a person can get there in the time it takes to dance five minuets, which would be considerably longer than five minutes.
  • Will Kemp, a colleague of Shakespeare's, danced the jig from London to Norwich. Unless you're talking about a party or someone who imitated him, the word you want is minute.
• "misanthropy" is the disdain of mankind—that is, the human race. "misandry" is the disdain of men—that is, the male sex.
• "mischievous" (playfully annoying) is properly pronounced as "MISS-chev-us" i.e 3 syllables. Many people mispronounce it "miss-CHEE-VEE-us", likely due to words like "devious", or just misreading the end. It doesn't help that people often spell it ending in "-vious", the misspelling matching the misprononciation.
• "miss" (opposite of "hit", or a title for an unmarried woman) for "mis-" (prefix meaning "wrongly").
• "mitten" (glove without separate fingers) vs. "midden" (garbage heap).
  • For added confusion, either of these could also be mixed up with "maiden" (mostly obsolete term for a young woman).
• "Mixtake" for "mistake". Could be a typo, since "s" and "x" are pretty close together on most keyboards.
  • Could also be a typo for "mixtape".
• "moral" (adhering to strict principles of right and wrong) vs. "morale" (confidence, spirit, willingness to fight) vs. "morel" (a type of mushroom) vs. "mortal" (someone who will eventually die).
  • None of which should be confused with "molar" (a kind of tooth, or the term for something dealing in terms of moles), or "Moler" (an Australian band).
  • Also, many a prominent person has talked about low "morality" when they meant low "morale". (They probably didn't mean low "molarity" or "molality", though.)
  • The correct phrase is "moral support", even though "morale support" would seem to make more sense in context.
• "Moray" (a type of eel) vs. "more" (pronounced "mor-ay"; the customs and traditions of a certain society). Eels aren't noted for their traditions, so if you see someone talking about a society's "morays" (and it's not a society where fishing is common), they probably mean the latter. "Moraine" is a kind of till.
• "moron" (an idiot) vs. "Mormon" (follower of Joseph Smith). While some people consider those who follow religions to be morons, mixing these two up may elicit offended complaints (or helpless laughter).
• "Miss" vs. "Mrs." vs. "Ms.": "Miss" refers specifically to an unmarried woman, and "Mrs." refers specifically to a married one. If you're writing something and want to leave a character's marital status ambiguous (or just don't feel like setting it in canon), you can use "Ms." which is equally applicable to both. Also applies to writing messages in real life.
• "X, much less Y"—to correctly use this phrase, X must be smaller, more reasonable, or otherwise more common than Y; the two are contrasted to show that Y is unlikely, forbidden, or at least a very bad idea, compared to X which is usually much safer or more reasonable but wouldn't be in the given context. For example:
  • "I wouldn't trust him to watch my purse, much less put him in charge of making sure the thieves don't get the Mona Lisa".
  • "The doctor says I'm not allowed to drink a beer, much less split a bottle of vodka with you."
  • Also, try not to confuse the above with "more or less", which is a term of approximation. Example:
    • "How much is this going to cost?" "Twenty thousand, more or less."
• "Murder" when what is meant is "murderer." If you are a so-called "murder" (the appropriate term is "murderee") you're most likely the victim (i.e., a corpse) and not the one who did the killing.
  • Either that or a group of crows. Crows are one of many animals that have a special name for their flock or herd—a murder of crows, a flange of baboons, a flock of priests, etc.
  • German people are especially prone to this mistake because murder sounds almost like the German word "Mörder" (meaning murderer). Murder in German is "Mord".
  • There's also "marauder" (an invader or plunderer) vs "murderer". Probably a spell check mistake, although marauders do often murder people.
• "murderess" (somewhat uncommon feminine equivalent of "murderer") vs. "murderous" (homicidal). A murderess is murderous, but that's still no reason to mix these two up.
• "muslin" (a fabric) for "Muslim" (a follower of Islam).
  • As the caption of the "Obama: Half-Breed Muslin" image◊ says, What's scarier, Obama being half-cloth half-human, or the fact that the person who made this sign still gets to vote?
  • Also, it's "Muslim", not "Moslem". It may seem like a harmless spelling variation in English, but "Muslim" and "Moslem" are two distinct worlds in Arabic: with "Muslim" referring to followers of Islam and "Moslem" meaning an unjust, evil person.
• Also, the appropriate usages of "Muslim" and "Islam". Islam is the religion; Muslims are people who follow the religion. As a rule, the term "Islamic" refers to things that pertain to Islam, while "Muslim" is used when referring to people. Therefore, one refers to Islamic law, Islamic doctrine, Islamic republics, Islamic dress, but to Muslim men and women, Muslim families, Muslim bakers, Muslim doctors, etc.
• "mute" (silent, incapable of speech) for "moot" (academic or irrelevant in American English, and debatable or disputed in British English, but silent in neither).
  • Likewise, a topic that is irrelevant to the discussion is a "moot point"; a mime with a sword is a "mute point"; and a cow's opinion is a "moo point".
• "mystic" (arcane, having to do with magic) vs. "mystique" (mysterious allure)
• "naval" (having to do with a navy) for "navel" (belly button). A "navel cruiser" is too small to help anyone, and a "naval piercing" is infrequent these days, though supposedly it has an excellent success rate.
  • Wonder what they teach in the Navel Academy?
  • Likewise, "navel gazing" (omphaloskepsis) is a form of Eastern Christian meditation. "Naval gazing" is the maritime version of trainspotting.
  • By the way, they're probably navel oranges you saw in the store. All the naval oranges are out at sea fighting off scurvy.
• "Nameless" (not having a name) is not the same as "unnamed" (having a name that is currently undisclosed).
• "Naturist" and "Naturalist" are two different things. The latter studies things in a natural state, the former likes being in a natural (i.e. unclothed, i.e. naked) state.
• "nauseous" (causing nausea) for "nauseated" (experiencing nausea). "I feel nauseous," really means, "I'm in a mood to make people sick." Hardly anyone gets this right: to the point it may be a language shift in progress. It is used properly in the song "You're a Mean One, Mr. Grinch" ("You nauseate me, Mr. Grinch, with a nauseous super-nauss.")
  • A good way to remember it: just as poisonous things make people poisoned, nauseous things make them nauseated.
• "nearsighted" vs. "shortsighted". A nearsighted person has a visual impairment that makes it hard for them to see distant words, pictures, and objects; a shortsighted person doesn’t think things through.
• "Neigh" (the sound a horse makes) vs. "nigh" (virtually, or approaching) vs. "nay" (objecting to something).
• If you ever chance to write about Niger, whether it be the country in Africa or the civil rights activist Niger Innis, DO NOT DOUBLE THE "G"! MSNBC made this very mistake in 2002.◊ (And remember, it's pronounced "NYE-jer", not...well, you know.)
• Women wear nightgowns, men wear nightshirts.
  • Nowadays, at least. Remember Wee Willy Winkie?
  • Both can wear dressing gowns, however.
• "notorious" (famous for something bad) vs. "nutritious" (full of nutrients). Probably a spellchecker mistake. The context was "a pair of nutritious villains" — perhaps the villains were big fans of healthy food, or full of nutritional value themselves.
• "now and days" for "nowadays" (eggcorn).
• "nudity" (the state of wearing no clothes) vs. "nudism" (a philosophical movement and lifestyle associated with that).
• "nutters" (mad people, plural noun) for "nuts" (mad, adjective)—very common in Harry Potter fandom thanks to a frequently misinterpreted throwaway line in one of the books. However, "nuts" can also be a plural noun (for people as well as fruit kernels), it's just that "nutters" is never an adjective.

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