You’re probably not going to confuse anybody by using two-letter abbreviations for days. But English doesn’t do that.
Category Archives: Elementary
Twenty twenty-one
The way dates are said out loud is sometimes a little different to the spoken form of a simple number. Short and simple.
I before E (except after C)
Lots of people think this (or even just the first part) is supposed to be a spelling rule and get annoyed by the exceptions. But they’ve only learned part of it!
A black-and-white issue?
You’d think colours are pretty elementary and there ought to be no mistakes there. But there are still pitfalls when colours are combined.
A new threat
Dutch doesn’t have words that end in D. Or rather, the pronunciation is the same as a final T so they have a hard time distinguishing the two.
GB, England and the UK
The term “Great Britain” has nothing to do with delusions of grandeur. It’s just the biggest island in the group, same as Gran Canaria or Grand Cayman.
Using “a” and “an”
Whether to use “a” or “an” depends on if a vowel follows. But remember: that’s determined by the spoken sound, not the alphabetical letter.
The Netherlands
Um… surely not. The Dutch don’t make mistakes when referring to their own country, do they? It turns out to be a surprisingly tricky one.
Checking the controls
Controls are mechanisms or procedures for making machines or processes behave as you want, i.e. controlling them, not checking them.
Decimal points
It’s the kind of thing that ought to belong in Elementary Dunglish but, surprisingly or not, it remains the commonest simple mistake of all.
