I liked the photo of my friend’s new puppy and commented “____, what a cutie! But why did you name him Puddles?”
a. Aw
b. Awe

Answer: a.

Explanation:
“Aw” is an interjection, like “oh,” “eh,” “huh” and “wow.” On the web, the word is often misspelled as “awe.” “Awe,” on the other hand is a noun, roughly synonymous with “wonder” or “amazement,” as in the phrase “shock and awe.” It’s occasionally used as a verb, in which case to awe is the same as to wow. But the interjection “aw” is separate. It’s used to express a wide range of emotion, including sympathy and disappointment as well as heart pangs caused by the cuteness of a puppy.

As I was saying just the other day, I think errors proliferate online because there are so many people writing that don’t read and so don’t see how words are spelled. Until, of course, they see a friend (mis)spell them on Facebook or Twitter and adopt that (mis)spelling.

See also: Srsly — do U loveee it or do U looove it?

Paul Brians includes awe, shucks in his Common Errors in English Usage.

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A _____ is a set of printable or displayable text characters in a specific style and size.
a. fount
b. font

Answer: Either, depending on location.

Explanation:

In the US, font is the standard spelling; British style was originally fount, although both spellings are used now. In Canada, we’ve adopted US style for this one, although we still maintain the British u in words like colour, flavour and favour.

Oxford Dictionaries Online provides a handy reference for British and American spelling.

See also: Font of wisdom or fount of wisdom?

Or,  just for fun, go read Steve Martin’s NY Times “Shouts and Murmurs” piece: Times Roman Font Announces Shortage of Periods

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Answer: a.

Explanation:
Sewing is stitching something together, like a tailor sews two pieces of fabric or a doctor sews a nasty cut. Sowing, on the other hand, is planting, as in putting seeds in the ground that you hope will grow. I guess as a culture, we’re increasingly distanced from the agricultural past but I was surprised by how frequently “sew” pops up online when it should be “sow.” In fact, it appears to be much more common in the phrase “you reap what you ____.”

Google poll:

You reap what you sew: 17,100,000

You reap what you sow:  3,200,000

Even allowing for the intentional uses of “sew” as a pun, that’s an awful lot of instances of the wrong use.

Paul Brians includes “reap what you sew” in his Common Errors in English Usage:

When you plant seeds you sow them. Galatians 6:7 says “A man reaps what he sows” (harvests what he plants, gets what he deserves). This agricultural metaphor gets mangled frequently into “you reap what you sew.” At best, you might rip what you sew, but you probably wouldn’t want to tell people about it.

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Answer: b., for AP style

Explanation:

“Halloween” is derived from “All Hallows Even.” The “een” at the end is a contraction of “even” (meaning evening) which is why the old spelling for Halloween had an apostrophe.

Halloween is the evening before All Hallows, which means “All Saints Day.” “All Hallows” originated in Old English (ealra hālgena) but the first record of “All Hallows Even” is 1556. The day is still sometimes referred to as “All Hallows Eve” and that is sometimes written as Allhallows Eve.

Some Halloween trivia:
All Saint’s Day was first celebrated in 609, in mid-May, but was moved to November 1 by decree of Pope Gregory IV. The day was reserved for prayer for the newly deceased to help them on their passage to Heaven. November 2 was All Souls’ Day.

The ancient roots of All Hallows are in the Pagan feast of Samhain (pronounced sah-win or sow-win), which marked the culmination of the harvest and the transition to the darker days of winter. At Samhain, it was thought that the veil between worlds was at its thinnest, allowing the dead (and other entities, like fairies) to walk among us.

The origin of trick-or-treating was most likely souling, which involved groups of the poor going from door to door on All Souls’ Day requesting soul cakes, spicy, round shortbreads that the more fortunate baked (or, I suppose, being more fortunate, had the servants bake). Both the act of giving them out and the act of eating them were considered forms of prayer for souls in purgatory. Here’s a soul cake recipe. Bake some — a soul is released from purgatory for each one!

***

Wikipedia provides much more Halloween history.

Michael Fosset offers more tips on AP style on Halloween-related terms.

Looking for some more Halloweeny fun? Try our Halloween geek quiz.

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Which is correct?
Publicly traded companies cannot legally _________ financial results.
a. withold
b. withhold

Answer: b.

Explanation:
I was typing away this morning and had one of those lapses that seem to happen more frequently as I get older — I couldn’t remember whether “withhold” had one “h” or two. It’s an odd word, with two of them side by side there. I tried typing them both out to see which one looked right but they both looked funny so I resorted to looking it up.

Then I did a verbatim search on Google — does it drive anyone else slightly mad that Google returns results for what it thinks you meant instead of what you type? GRRRRR … Anyway, I did a verbatim search so it would stop correcting me and here’s what came up:

withold: 5,920,000 hits
withhold: 173,000,000 hits

So it looks like most people that use the word know how to spell it. Or, I suppose, look it up. That’s always a good option.

Withold vs. withhold is one of the questions in this spelling test. Maybe I’ll try it … I’m sure I’ll get that one right.
 

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Answer: a., in the United States

Explanation:
“Skeptical” and “sceptical” are both correct but the first spelling is standard in the United States and the second is standard in the United Kingdom.

Grammarist provides examples from various countries.

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Answer: b.

Explanation:
“Someday” refers to an unspecified time in the future, as in “Someday my prince will come.” As two words, “some day” refers to an unspecified but specific day: The interview will be scheduled for a particular but unspecified day the following week. “Someday” is incorrect in that context.

Confusingly, you can substitute “some day” for situations where “someday” works — but not vice versa.

Grammarist explains more about “someday” vs. “some day.”

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Answer: Either

Explanation:
Either word is acceptable. I prefer “inauthentic” but “unauthentic” is correct as well. The gray market is the collective system of unauthorized sales channels for products. Gray market software, for example, may be pirated.

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Explanation:
US style is canceled; British is cancelled. That’s the general rule for adding “ed” or “ing” to words that end in a single vowel followed by the letter “l.”

Here’s a list:
label:
labelled, labelling (British); labeled, labeling (US)
travel:
travelled, travelling (British); traveled, traveling (US)
shovel:
shovelled, shovelling (British); shoveled, shoveling (US)
cancel:
cancelled, cancelling (British); canceled, canceling (US)
equal:
equalled, equalling (British); equaled, equaling (US)
model:
modelled, modelling (British); modeled, modeling (US)

All bets are off, however, when the last letter is anything other than “L.” Some are always doubled, some never — and you pretty much just have to learn them case by case.

Literacy & Learning provides more information on when to double consonants before “ed” and “ing.”

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Answer: b.

Explanation:
Full disclosure: I thought “wrack” was the correct word until I started looking into this one. Apparently it’s not.

Racking something, in this context, means putting it on a rack. In this case, the reference is to the rack used for torture — you’re torturing your brain to try to find an answer.

Maeve Maddox, on Daily Writing Tips, has a very interesting post about “wracking” vs. “racking.” Here’s an excerpt:

“The word rack has numerous meanings, both as a noun and as a verb. As a noun it originated from a word for “framework” which was probably related to a verb meaning “to stretch out.” The original framework was no doubt used for some innocent occupation such as stretching leather. Later on some evil so-and-so adapted that kind of rack for the purpose of torturing human beings by stretching their limbs.

It is from the torture rack that we get the expression “to rack one’s brains.”

The word wrack, with its identical pronunciation, is related to Old English wraec “misery” and wrecan “to punish.” In the fourteenth century wrack took on the meaning “wrecked ship.” In time it came to mean “seaweed” or anything cast up upon the shore. The expression “to go to wrack and ruin” means to fall into a state of decay or destruction.”

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