Commonly Confused Words

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One of the key components of the Improve Your English Online site is the focus on helping you understand the difference between the most commonly confused words in English. These words are notorious for tripping people up, causing even native English speakers to make embarrassing errors in English usage.

Being able to correctly differentiate between confusing words will enable you to become a better speaker and writer of English. This will help you advance in your schooling, improve your job prospects, and enhance your success in any field of endeavor.

This page comprises the top 40 hits (or should I say “misses”?) of the words in English that are most commonly mixed up with other words.

Under each entry, you’ll find definitions for each word along with example sentences to show you its correct usage. Most of the entries also contain memory aids to help you tell the difference between commonly confused words: these tips are marked with a pointing hand symbol.

Many of the word pairs included in this collection are types of homonyms: they may sound alike or be spelled in a similar way, but have different meanings. Unfortunately, spellchecker programs often fail to alert you when you’ve used the wrong word, because you may have spelled it correctly. That’s why it’s imperative that you be able to tell the difference between these troublesome word pairs yourself.

Top 40 Commonly Confused Word Pairs

  1. accept/except
  2. advise/advice
  3. affect/effect
  4. all together/altogether
  5. appraise/apprise
  6. assure/ensure/insure
  7. bring/take
  8. can/may
  9. capitol/capital
  10. compliment/complement
  11. compose/comprise
  12. continual/continuous
  13. council/counsel/consul
  14. devise/device
  15. discrete/discreet
  16. disinterested/uninterested
  17. e.g./i.e.
  18. elicit/illicit
  19. emigrate/immigrate
  20. farther/further
  21. fewer/less
  22. flare/flair
  23. flaunt/flout
  24. horde/hoard
  25. imply/infer
  26. it’s/its
  27. lay/lie
  28. lend/loan
  29. loath/loathe
  30. lose/loose
  31. passed/past
  32. prescribe/proscribe
  33. principal/principle
  34. sight/site/cite
  35. stationary/stationery
  36. they’re/there/their
  37. to/too/two
  38. weather/whether
  39. who’s/whose
  40. you’re/your/yore

Photo credits: Photo 1: Image by Robin Higgins from Pixabay