Lesson 0016

Commonly Misused Words

English learners frequently use words in speech and writing that sound right (to them) but are actually wrong.
Such cases of misused words in English happen all the time. 
But don’t worry, even native speakers make mistakes.

Here’s a list of the most commonly misused words in English and how to correctly use them.

affect vs effect

• One is a verb (“affect”), the other is a noun (“effect”). You just can not use one instead of the other. In other words, you can only have an effect on something once you affect it, for example :

My clothes are wet because it’s raining.

The rain affected my clothes.

The rain had an effect on my clothes.

accept vs except

• These two words sound very similar but have very different meanings. “Accept” is a verb , means to receive something willingly. While , “except” is preposition or a conjunction , signifies exclusion.

She accepted the card I made for her.

I can attend all the meetings scheduled for this month except on Saturday.

fewer vs less

• “Fewer” refers to countable nouns (or separate items that you can count) while “less” refers to uncountable nouns (or things we usually look at as a whole).                                                              

I ate fewer apples than yesterday.
I have less money now than yesterday.