Bryson's Dictionary of Troublesome Words - Bill Bryson [25]
douse, dowse. The first means to drench; the second means to search for water.
drunk driving, drunken driving. Although not all style arbiters agree on this, drunken is the usual and preferred form when the word appears adjectivally before a noun—thus “drunken behavior,” “drunken driver,” “drunken driving.”
drunkenness. Note -nn-.
due to. Most authorities continue to accept that due is an adjective only and must always modify a noun. Thus “He was absent due to illness” would be wrong. We could correct it either by writing “He was absent because of [or owing to] illness” or by recasting the sentence in such a way as to give due a noun to modify, e.g., “His absence was due to illness.”
The rule is mystifyingly inconsistent—no one has ever really explained why “owing to” used prepositionally is acceptable while “due to” used prepositionally is not—but it should perhaps still be observed, at least in formal writing, if only to avoid a charge of ignorance.
Dutchess for the county in New York State.
E
each is not always an easy word, even for the authorities. Here are William and Mary Morris writing in The Harper Dictionary of Contemporary Usage: “Each of the variants indicated in boldface type count as an entry.” Make it counts. As the Morrises doubtless knew but failed to note, when each is the subject of a sentence, the verb should be singular.
A plural verb is correct when the sentence has another subject and each is a mere adjunct. Again we can cite an error made by an authority, in this case Philip Howard in The State of the Language: “The separate genres of journalism each creates its own jargon, as any specialized subject or activity always does.” It should be “each create their own jargon.” Genres is the subject of that sentence, so the verb must respond to it.
Deciding whether to use a singular or plural verb is not as difficult as it may at first seem. In fact, the rule could hardly be more straightforward. When each precedes the noun or pronoun to which it refers, the verb should be singular: “Each of us was . . .” When it follows the noun or pronoun, the verb should be plural: “We each were . . .”
Each not only influences the number of the verb, it also influences the number of later nouns and pronouns. In simpler terms, if each precedes the verb, subsequent nouns and pronouns should be plural (e.g., “They each are subject to sentences of five years”), but if each follows the verb, the subsequent nouns and pronouns should be singular (“They are each subject to a sentence of five years”).
each and every is at best a trite way of providing emphasis, at worst redundant, and generally both, as here: “Each and every one of the twelve songs on Marshall Crenshaw’s debut album is breezy and refreshing” (Washington Post). Equally to be avoided is each individual, as in “Players do not have to face the perils of qualifying for each individual tournament” (New York Times). In both cases each alone would have been sufficient.
each other, one another. A few arbiters of usage continue to insist on each other for two things and one another for more than two. There is no harm in observing such a distinction, but little to be gained from it, and, as Fowler long ago noted, the practice has no basis in historical usage.
Earhart, Amelia, for the aviator who famously disappeared while trying to circumnavigate the globe in 1937.
Earth, earth. When considered as a planet, particularly in apposition to other cosmic features,