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quandary. Not quandry or quandery.

quantum leap has become a cliché and is best avoided. A separate objection is that its general sense of a revolutionary step forward is at variance with its actual scientific sense of a movement or advance that is discrete and measurable but not necessarily, or even usually, dramatic.

Queen’s College, Oxford, but Queens’ College, Cambridge.

query, inquiry, enquiry. A query is a single question. An inquiry or enquiry may be a single question or an extensive investigation. Either spelling is correct, but inquiry is preferred by most dictionaries in both Britain and America.

question, leading. A leading question is not a challenging or hostile one, as is sometimes thought, but the opposite. It is a question designed to encourage the person being questioned to make the desired response. A lawyer who says to a witness, “So you didn’t see the murder, did you?” has asked a leading question.

question mark has become an overworked embellishment of the expression “a question hanging over,” which is itself wearyingly overused. Consider: “The case . . . has raised a question mark over the competence of British security” (Times). Would you say of a happy event that it had raised an exclamation mark over the proceedings or that negotiations that had been suspended had a comma hanging over them?

quinquennial can mean either to last for five years or to occur once every five years. Because of the inherent ambiguity, the word is almost always better replaced with a more specific phrase.

quoting in fragments is often a needless distraction, as here: “Lowe also had been sick, but said he was now feeling ‘better’ ” (Boston Globe). You should have some justification for quoting matter, especially in fragments. When the word or words being quoted are unusual or unexpected or particularly descriptive (“It was, he said, a ‘lousy’ performance”) or are otherwise notable, the use of quotation marks is always unobjectionable and often advisable. But to set off a workaday word like better in the example above is unnecessary. Here is a sentence in which the second set of quotation marks is as unobjectionable as the first is fatuous: “Dietz agreed that loneliness was a ‘feature’ of Hinckley’s life, but he added that studies have shown that ‘loneliness is as common as the common cold in winter’ ” (Washington Post).

A separate, grammatical danger of quoting in fragments is seen here: “Although he refused to be drawn on the future of the factory, Sir Kenneth said that the hope of finding a buyer ‘was not out of the question’ ” (Times). Clearly Sir Kenneth would have said, “That is not out of the question,” not “That was not out of the question.” In quoted material, even when fragmentary, the tense must be preserved.

A final problem is the tendency of some writers to put the words of one person into the mouths of many, as here: “Witnesses at the scene said that there was ‘a tremendous bang and then all hell broke loose’ ” (Guardian). The comment should be paraphrased or attributed to just one witness.

R

rack, wrack. “You didn’t need a medical diploma to see that Williams was wracked with pain” (New York Times). Wrack is an archaic variant of wreck and now almost never appears except in the expression wrack and ruin. Rack, the word intended in the quotation, means to put under strain. The expressions are nerve-racking and to rack one’s brains.

radius. The plural can be either radii or radiuses.

raining cats and dogs. No one knows what inspired this expression, but it is worth noting that in 1738, when Jonathan Swift condemned it, it was already hackneyed.

ranges of figures. “Profits in the division were expected to rise by between $35 and $45 million” (Observer). Although most people will see at once that the writer meant to indicate a range of $10 million, literally she was saying that profits could be as little as $35 or as much as $45 million. If you mean “between $35 million and $45 million,” it is generally better to say so.

rapt, wrapped. One is rapt in thought, not wrapped.