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rarefy, rarefaction, not rari-, are the preferred spellings.

ravage, ravish. The first means to lay waste. The second means to rape or carry off—or, a touch confusingly, to enrapture. Clearly, in all senses, for both words, care needs to be exercised to avoid confusion.

raze. “Another Las Vegas landmark was razed to the ground over the weekend” (USA Today). The ground is the only place to which a structure can be razed. It is enough to say that a building has been razed.

react should be reserved for spontaneous responses (“He reacted to the news by fainting”). It should not be used to indicate responses marked by reflection, as it was here: “The Vice President’s lawyers were not expected to react to the court’s decision before Monday at the earliest” (Los Angeles Times).

reason . . . is because is a common construction, and has been for at least two hundred years, but it continues to be criticized as a tautology by many authorities. Consider an example from the Observer: “The reason she spends less and less time in England these days is because her business interests keep her constantly on the move.” Those authorities who object to such constructions (and not all do) maintain that the sentence would be better with because deleted or replaced with that. They are right about the tautology but, I would submit, wrong (or at least somewhat off beam) about the remedy. The fault in such sentences lies at the front end. Remove the reason and its attendant verb is and in most cases a crisper, more focused sentence emerges: “She spends less and less time in England these days because her business interests keep her constantly on the move.”

reason why, like reason is . . . because (see above), is generally redundant. Consider these two examples: “Grover said her contract had been terminated, but no one at the company would tell her the reason why” (San Francisco Chronicle); “His book argues that the main reason why inner-city blacks are in such a sorry state is not because whites are prejudiced but because low-skilled jobs near their homes are disappearing” (Economist). An improvement can nearly always be effected by removing one word or the other—e.g., the reason from the first example, why from the second.

reckless. Not wreckless, unless you are describing a setting in which there are no wrecks.

reconstruction. “The play is a dramatic reconstruction of what might happen when a combination of freak weather conditions threatens to flood London” (Times). As a moment’s reflection should have made apparent to the writer, you cannot reconstruct an event that has not yet happened.

refute, confute, rebut. “McGuinness vehemently refuted all such allegations” (Chicago Tribune). Refute means to show conclusively that an allegation is wrong. It does not mean simply to dispute or deny a contention, as was evidently intended in the example. Confute has the same meaning as refute. About that there is no issue.

More problematic, however, is rebut. Some dictionaries suggest that it means the same as refute—that is, that it signifies proving a charge wrong—while others maintain that it means merely to answer a charge or claim, not necessarily to disprove it. For that reason the word should be employed cautiously.

regretfully, regrettably. The first means with feelings of regret: “Regretfully, they said their farewells.” The second means unfortunately: “Regrettably, I did not have enough money to buy it.”

relatively, like comparatively, should not be used unless you wish to convey some sense of a comparison or relationship. As often as not, the word can be removed without loss, as here: “The group has taken the relatively bold decision to expand its interests in Nigeria” (Times). See also COMPARATIVELY.

remunerate. Metathesis is the term for transposing sounds or letters, which is what often happens with this word, as here: “Mr. Strage said in the witness box that he was to receive fair renumeration for his work” (Independent). The urge to associate remunerate with words of quantity like numeral