But they’re easy enough to keep straight—if you have a good memory hook to help you.

Part of the confusion comes from the fact that these two look a little alike. What’s more, they’re somewhat similar in meaning, and are found in similar-looking sentence constructions.

Most people have at least a vague idea of what they mean. But because they stand for Latin terms, learning the words they stand for won’t give us their precise meanings. We need to know what they mean in English, and we need a good memory hook to hang them on after we’ve learned them.

This is a case where it helps to fudge a little. First we learn the Latin meanings, then we make up our own translations, using plain-English terms that will work better. For example, take e.g. It stands for exempli gratia , but knowing the full Latin terms isn’t much help unless we happen to know the language.

So why not create our own translation, something inaccurate but effective—something that’ll tie in to the “ for example” meaning? Maybe something like “example given,” or “example gratis.” And for its mate (that is, i.e.), we can circumvent the Latin id est (“that is”) and plug in some simple words that do have matching first letters, like “it equals.”

So if we’re giving an example, we’d use the e.g. form—as in “Let’s send someone to the spelling bee who’s really good (e.g., Albert).” The “example given” helps us remember that Albert is an example of the kind of person you’d like to send, and implies that there are other qualified folks.

But if Albert really is the one and only person you want to recommend, you could say something like “Let’s send our best speller (i.e., Albert) to represent us in the bee.” Albert equals the best speller, so you’d use i.e.

Some people seem to have the mistaken idea that i.e. is used when talking about only one person or thing, and that e.g. is used with more than one. That’s not the case. In the sample sentences above, we could have said “Let’s send two or three of our best people (e.g....” and “Let’s send our three best spellers (i.e....).”

Using (or teaching) the fudged plain-English words can be a big help to remembering.

Note: Although there are variations, here’s the way these abbreviations are usually written. The abbreviation itself (i.e., e.g. or i.e.) is usually placed just inside the first parenthesis, followed by a comma, then by a word or some words to fill out the meaning, then by the closing parenthesis.

Give this method a try. Id est really easy.