Writing for Business - A Whatis.com Blog

May 17 2012   1:49PM GMT

Spot the error



Posted by: Ivy Wigmore
common sentence errors, Latin abbreviations, word meanings

What’s wrong with this sentence?

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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