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A Word, Please: A listicle that spells things out for you

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Listicles are all the rage these days, or so young folks tell me.

For those of a certain age (by which I mean those of us old enough to remember pet rocks and Ollie North, but not so old we can’t tell the difference), a listicle is one of those attention-grabbing “click bait” lists like “Seven Things You Didn’t Know About the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles” or “10 Fashion Accessories to Purge from Your Closet Now” or “Eight Former Child Stars Who Work in Fast Food.”

So, in the time-honored tradition of caving in to trends, I created a listicle of my own: “11 Words You’re Spelling Wrong.”

Of course, in the post-pet-rock era, spelling isn’t quite the problem it used to be. If you type “embarrassed” with just one R, your word-processing program will catch it. So this list contains only errors spell-check won’t catch because they are correct spellings, just not for the word you’re trying to use.

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1. Forgo. When you do without something, there’s no E in forgo. Yes, there’s a word spelled forego, but that’s rare and means to go before.

2. Palate. That great meal you had, the one that you just had to blog about, didn’t please your palette. That’s a color scheme or an artist’s board dabbed with paint. Nor did it please your pallet. That’s one of those wooden platforms used to stack and move merchandise in a warehouse. The one meaning sense of taste is a reference to the roof of the mouth. One L, one T.

3. Stationery. People tend to spell stationary the same way in all uses. That is a correct spelling, just not for paper products. Stationary means unmoving. Paper and envelopes and note cards are spelled with an E.

4. Longtime. If you were to write about your “long-time companion,” spell-check wouldn’t flag your error. The program is great at pointing out when you’ve mushed two words together into an incorrect word: childsplay. But it never corrects you when you use a hyphenated term in place of an existing word. The adjective longtime, unlike the adjective long-term, has no hyphen.

5. Lineup. Same problem. Spell check won’t correct you if, when talking about your team’s lineup, you make your own word from scratch and use a hyphen: line-up. But, in fact, the noun lineup has no hyphen. The verb is two words. Line up everyone who will be in the lineup.

6. Breathe. The verb, which rhymes with seethe, has an E at the end. The noun, which rhymes with death, does not. Take a breath. Just breathe.

7. Rein. When you want to get a handle on your spending, your kids, your employees or your cupcake habit, it’s like taking the reins of a horse. This one is tough because it’s a very similar to saying you “reign supreme.” Both reining and reigning are about control. But reining something in is like steering a horse. Reigning is being king or queen.

8. Led. The past tense of the verb “lead” has no A in it. Unfortunately, it’s easy to look at the word “lead” and think of something that rhymes with “bed” because the element called lead does just that. The verb lead rhymes with need and its past tense, led, should not be confused with noun in lead poisoning.

9. Medal. An honor, an award, a thing you hang on your uniform, is spelled with a D. It may be made of metal, but it’s still a medal.

10. Disburse. To distribute money is to disburse it. Don’t confuse it with the word meaning to break up a crowd, which is disperse.

11. Sleight. When you’re talking about deceit, trickery or magic, that’s sleight of hand. Not slight.

JUNE CASAGRANDE is the author of “The Best Punctuation Book, Period.” She can be reached at JuneTCN@aol.com.

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