Bryson's Dictionary of Troublesome Words - Bill Bryson [13]
1. If the pronoun appears at the end of the sentence, you can always use the accusative and be on firm ground. Thus, “Nobody knew but her”; “Everyone had eaten but him.”
2. When the pronoun appears earlier in the sentence, it is almost always better to put it in the nominative, as in “No one but he had seen it.” The one exception is when the pronoun is influenced by a preceding preposition, but such constructions are relatively rare and often clumsy. Two examples might be “Between no one but them was there any bitterness” and “To everyone but him life was a mystery.” See also THAN, 3.
C
Caesarean, not -ian, remains the preferred spelling for the form of childbirth properly known as a caesarean section. References to Roman emperors titled Caesar should be similarly spelled but capitalized.
Caius, the Cambridge college, is formally Gonville and Caius College. Caius is pronounced “keys.”
calligraphy. “Both ransom notes have been forwarded to calligraphy experts in Rome” (Daily Mail). The writer meant graphologists or graphology experts. Calligraphy is an art.
Caltech (one word) is the common name for the California Institute of Technology, in Pasadena.
camellia for the flower. Not camelia.
can, may. Can applies to what is possible and may to what is permissible. You can drive your car the wrong way down a one-way street, but you may not. Despite the simplicity of the rule, errors are common, even among experts. Here is William Safire writing in the New York Times on the pronunciation of junta: “The worst mistake is to mix languages. You cannot say ‘joonta’ and you cannot say ‘hunta.’ ” But you can and quite easily. What Mr. Safire meant was that you may not or should not or ought not.
cannot help but is an increasingly common construction and perhaps now may be said to carry the weight of idiom, but it is also unnecessarily wordy and a little irregular. “You cannot help but notice what a bad name deregulation has with voters” (Economist) would be better (or at least more conventionally phrased) as either “You cannot help notice” or “You cannot but notice.”
canvas, canvass. The first is the fabric; the second is a verb meaning to solicit, especially for votes.
capital, capitol. Capitol always applies to a building, usually the place where legislatures gather in the United States. It is always capitalized when referring to the domed building in Washington, D.C., housing the U.S. Congress. In all other senses, capital is the invariable spelling.
carabinieri, not cari-, for the Italian security force roughly equivalent to the French gendarmerie. Like gendarmes, carabinieri are soldiers employed in police duties. They are separate from, and not to be confused with, the state police (polizia statale in Italian), who also deal with criminal matters. Carabinieri is a plural; a single member of the force is a carabiniere. See also GENDARMES.
carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide. Carbon dioxide is the gas we exhale when we breathe; carbon monoxide is the highly poisonous gas associated with car exhausts.
cardinal numbers, ordinal numbers. Cardinal numbers are those that denote size but not rank: one, two, three, etc. Ordinal numbers are those that denote position: first, second, third, etc.
careen, career. Occasionally confused when describing runaway vehicles and the like. Careen should convey the idea of swaying or tilting dangerously. If all you mean is uncontrolled movement, use career.
caret, not carat, for the insertion mark (^) associated with proofreading.
Catharine’s, Catherine’s. See ST. CATHERINE’S COLLEGE.
ceiling, floor. Ceiling used figuratively in the sense of an upper limit is a handy word, but like many other handy words, it is apt to be overused. When you do employ it figuratively, you should never forget that its literal meaning is always lurking in the background, ready to spring forward and make an embarrassment of your metaphor, as in this memorable headline from the Daily Gulf Times: “Oil ministers want to stick to ceiling.”
Floor in the sense of a lower limit is, of course, equally likely