a. Typos
b. Typoes
c. Typo’s

Answer: a

Google poll results:

typos: 28,300,000

typo’s: 728,000

typoes: 119,000

This is, somewhat ironically, a tricky word to spell correctly. Many words that end in o take an e — potatoes, tomatoes. Nevertheless, most people who misspell it make it typo’s instead. No excuse for that, as far as I can see.

For your amusement: The Seven Most Disastrous Typos Of All Time

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To prevent a crippling worm attack, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) urged that all users _______ application of the patch.

a. expedite

b. expediate

Answer: a.

Explanation:

Expedite is by far the better choice here.

Although I hate to have to report this, expediate is gaining acceptance as a word — although I’m happy to report that it’s not in very many dictionaries. It means expedite, which means to do something promptly or to speed up a process. I expect this is another word created because it was being used. People probably made it up as a verb form of expedient. What next — expediation instead of expedition? I’m too scared to look.

Expediate comes to me via my husband, who works at an IT firm (which shall remain nameless to prevent me from having drinks tossed in my face at the summer mixer). A coworker used it in a construction similar to the one I used above. The hub’s workplace is a fruitful source of blog fodder — his boss inspired the mute point post.

Expediate was featured in the Worthless Word for the Day list.

What horrific grammatical errors are you hearing in the wilds of  IT and business? Let me know!

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If a new employee has only worked in a WYSIWYG interface before, _____ may be very confused by the content management application’s HTML window.

a. he

b. she

c. s/he

d. he or she (alternatively, she or he)

e. they

Answer: a. — if you follow AP or Chicago style. If you aren’t constrained by a particular style, e. (they) is the best option.

Explanation:

It’s called the generic he, used to represent a single person whose gender is not specified. But of course, he is not generic — it refers to a single male person. Both the AP Stylebook and the Chicago Manual of Style say you should use he if you get yourself into a situation where you need a generic pronoun. They both also recommend that you try to avoid that situation or rewrite your sentence to get out of it.

Which seems a little cowardly to me — really, if they recommend he as the appropriate generic pronoun, they should at least stand by their choice and recommend that you use it freely as required by your sentence.

Singular they is nothing new. Here’s what Paul Brians has to say about it: Using the plural pronoun to refer to a single person of unspecified gender is an old and honorable pattern in English, not a newfangled bit of degeneracy or a politically correct plot to avoid sexism (though it often serves the latter purpose).

Motivated Grammar also has a nice post on singular they and its use by well-respected writers for hundreds of years.

I expect that singular they will become acceptable, especially considering that rules tend to follow use and use online overwhelmingly favors it. In the meantime, however, you have options: You can take the coward’s way out and rewrite your sentence or boldly buck the rules and use it anyway. I like the second alternative — if enough of us take it and we stand our ground, style guides will have to bow to the inevitability of singular they.

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The VoIP system proposal wasn’t ready in time and we missed the deadline specified in the RFP.  We decided to just  ___________ to experience and get organized more quickly next time.

a. chuck it up

b. chalk it up

c. chock it up

Answer: b

Explanation:

To chalk something up is to attribute it. When we chalk something up to experience, we’re saying that although it wasn’t the outcome we wanted, we can at least learn from the experience.  The phrase originated with the custom of marking bar tabs and scores on a slate in pubs. So, if we had Wins, Losses and Experience on a chalk board, we would write resources put into VoIP system proposal under the Experience heading and use what we learned this time to improve our chances next time.

The phrase chalk one up for is a direct reference to the score-keeping custom. If we’d managed to get our proposal in on time and had the winning bid, we might have said Chalk one up for us! Metaphorically, we have a chalk board with the name of our company and the names of other companies that are submitting proposals. On that chalk board, we mark one under our company name because we won that contest.

The Online Slang Dictionary defines chalk up this way: “Surrender and accept the cause as something beyond one’s control or give credit to something beyond one’s control (if positive),” which is a fair translation of how the phrase is used.

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Your Apple ID is the user name you use to _____ to iCloud, iTunes and the app store.

a. log in

b. login

Answer: a

Explanation:

The general rule is that the verb phrase is two words while the noun or adjective form is the single compound word. So you log in to something — as long as you can remember your login info.

Here’s a list from The Chipmunk of Doom. Ignore at your own peril.

Verb form is the first example in each case:

• set up vs. setup
• make up vs. makeup
• work out vs. workout
• pick up vs. pickup
• get up vs. getup
• turn out vs. turnout
• log in vs. login
• turn over vs. turnover

See more examples and explanation here.

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The quickly growing list of C-level titles includes CEO, CFO, CIO, CSO, etc.

Explanation:

Etc. (short for et cetera) means and so forth or and other things. By saying that C-level titles include CEO, CFO, CIO, CSO, we’re saying that the list is incomplete, so etc. is redundant.

Wikipedia has an entry about et cetera.

Want to discuss people who pronounce it eck-cetera? Don’t get me started. Ditto ex-presso. (Did you know ditto comes from Latin too?)

Want some more Latin fun? See our quiz for Latin lovers or our Latin phrases cheat sheet.

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Explanation:

Hardy means tough or rugged; hearty means vigorous, intense or whole-hearted.

The words aren’t unrelated. You could use a word like robust, for example, as a synonym for either one. However, hearty usually refers to human attributes, like a hearty appetite. Both devices and appetites can be robust. Devices, on the other hand, can be hardy but they can’t be hearty.

Althouse explores the important question of whether you should party hearty or party hardy. (Why not both?)

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Answer: c.
Explanation:
A lingua franca (also known as a working language, bridge language or vehicular language) is a third language that speakers of two different native tongues use to communicate. For example, before the 18th century, Latin was the lingua franca of Europe because most educated people learned it. Thus, people from various European countries could communicate without being able to speak each other’s native language.

A pidgin is a simplified language that speakers of two different languages develop to communicate.

A creole is a language that develops naturally from a combination of languages.

The first lingua franca was actually a language called Lingua Franca.

From Wikipedia:

The original Lingua Franca was a mixed language composed mostly (80%) of Italian with a broad vocabulary drawn from Turkish, French, Greek, Arabic, Portuguese and Spanish. It was in use throughout the eastern Mediterranean as the language of commerce and diplomacy in and around the Renaissance era. At that time, Italian speakers dominated seaborne commerce in the port cities of the Ottoman empire. Franca was the Italian word for Frankish. Its usage in the term lingua franca originated from its meaning in Arabic and Greek, dating from before the Crusades and during the Middle Ages, whereby all Western Europeans were called “Franks” or Faranji in Arabic and Phrankoi in Greek during the times of the late Eastern Roman Empire.^[3] The term lingua franca is first recorded in English in 1678.

Amanda Briney on About.com also has an interesting article on lingua franca.

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Answer: b.
Explanation:
Naval refers to something related to the navy. Navy Knowledge Online (NKO), for example, is a naval education website.

A navel, on the other hand, is a bellybutton. So a navel research lab would study matters related to bellybuttons. (Navel is also a type of orange, so the lab might study those instead. But that wouldn’t be as funny.)

Navel vs. naval is covered in Paul Brians’ Common Errors in English Usage.

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Answer: a, according to both the AP Stylebook and the Chicago Manual of Style. Standards differ, however. Within the health IT industry, the preference is overwhelmingly for spelling it healthcare. And as we’ve seen with the change from Web site to website over the last decade, the modern trend is toward one word. Nevertheless, if you’re required to conform to AP or Chicago style, you’ll have to spell it as health care, at least for now.

Michael Millenson discusses health care vs. healthcare and identifies a tipping point in favor of the latter.

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