"You're going to change that, aren't you?" My cousin pointed to the offending subhead in a draft he was reading for me, his face showing something between surprise and disappointment that I'd let something so obvious slip by. The subhead at the end of his accusing finger read "Running the Gantlet." His problem with it? He assumed it should have been "Gauntlet," because he'd seen it that way so many times. He was right that it's often spelled that way. But the two words are different, and from different languages. Gantlet is from a Swedish root meaning roughly "running down a lane," and was used to describe a military punishment in which the offender was forced to run between two rows of men who struck him as he passed. So we use it now to mean attacked or pressured from two or more directions—sort of like being between a rock and a hard place. Gauntlet, on the other hand, comes from Old French by way of Middle English. It referred to a kind of armored glove worn by knights, and by association, is now used in reference to other gloves as well. To throw down the gauntlet means to challenge someone. Largely because of their similarity in spelling and pronunciation, the two words have been interchanged so often that each is now viewed by many editors as a different (but acceptable) spelling of the other. Many editors, but by no means all. So to be safe, it's a good idea to use them the way they were used in their respective parent languages. And to be extra safe, don't throw down either one when someone uses one of them differently. |
Do We "Hone In" on Something, or "Home In" on It?Although many people—including professional writers—use "hone in on," the standard form is "home in on." We see the nonstandard wording in well edited publications (including The Washington Post), and hear it in the speech of educated people. Interchanging the two is understandable. They look and sound a lot alike, and there is at least a little overlap in meaning. To home in on, common in military use, means “to guide (as by heat or radar) to a target—to its intended home.” And to hone means “to sharpen or improve,” which might suggest making changes to reach a goal. Maybe the two will become interchangeable someday. But for now, keep honing your skills, and homing in on standard wording. |
Your answer is probably the same one we get when we ask the working adults in our classes. They always recite that old "i-before-e" rule—at least the first part of it. Very few of them recall the end, which goes something like "except after c, or when sounded like a, as in neighbor or weigh."
Most of us learned that rule in the early grades, and had it reinforced over the years by teachers and books. So it must be a good rule, right?
Well, what makes a rule good? One criterion is the number of exceptions—if there are too many, the rule can become practically useless. And how many are we dealing with here? Some books say there are five exceptions to the i-e rule, some say seven, one says nine. So we decided to run a simple little check of our own.
We started a list, and whenever one of us thought of an exception, we jotted it down. In two or three weeks, with no computer help, we had a list of more than forty exceptions to the rule. We'd be willing to bet that there are at least a hundred, maybe many more. So the rule is not only of little if any value, it could work against us when we're trying to spell one of the many exceptions.
So forget the rule—if you can.
And forget the rest of the old spelling rules too. Use these instead. They work.
• Use your spellchecker, but don't depend on it entirely.
• Keep a good dictionary in reach, and reach for it often.
• Ask a good speller to proofread your work.
• Learn memory aids (there's a rat in separate) or make up your own.
• Keep a personal list of words you have trouble with.