Miner & Minor

With an E – A person who digs a mine.
With an O – Small in size, significance, etc. A person under the legal age of responsibility. A musical term relating to scales with certain intervals lowered by half steps. Also, a secondary, subordinate educational degree – but that implies the "lesser significance" definition, doesn't it? So I didn't draw anything for that.
(Of course, I suppose the musical "minor" implies that definition as well, with the lowered notes. But I did decide to include that in the picture. Well, what can I say? I'm an illustrator, not a linguist. And definitely not a perfectionist.) :)

vacation

I'm taking a little vacation in a few weeks, and the thought of packing has me wondering: should I use my duffel bag or my duffle bag?

Red, Reed, Read, and... Read

Two pairs of homophones today (reed & read, red & read) which contain an overlapping pair of homographs – words that are spelled the same but pronounced differently (read & read).

PS,
To our colorblind friends, sorry for the big gray square up there. (And to our black and white purists, sorry for straying from the format.) I toyed around with some iconic "red" items, but making them black and labeling them red just didn't seem to work as well as simply having a big red square. Luckily "blew/blue" is the only other color homophone I'll have to deal with, so this won't be an ongoing concern.

Berry & Bury

Baited & Bated

Baited – lured to a trap with the promise of a reward, or the act of having placed that reward in the trap.
Bated – diminished, reduced, basically the same thing as “abated.”
So if we baited the trap with cheese, then everything about the rat is bated – its life is bated, our rat problem is bated, and its breath is definitely bated. Yes, folks, it’s “waiting with bated breath” not baited. (And not “weighting,” for that matter.) It means to hold your breath in excited anticipation, it doesn’t mean your breath smells like cheese. Though you still might consider a mint now and then, for reals.

Serial commas

So hearts momentarily stopped last week during the Great Serial Comma Misunderstanding of 2011. Suffice it to say, the rules have not changed and are as contentious as ever. We all know the arguments for and against it, and we all know to be consistent one way or the other, I'm sure. But it bears asking... are you with serial commas or against them?

Plum & Plumb

No more serial commas?!

This article put a kink in my day. A moment of silence for the serial comma – except when needed to resolve ambiguity, of course. I'll miss it. What about you?

Loose & Lose

The words this week aren't homophones. But I felt compelled to include them because as I find writers absentmindedly interchanging them, it's become my second-biggest grammatical pet peeve*. These two words are completely different – they have different spellings, different pronunciations, and different meanings. They're simply not related. But what does that matter to the careless writer? They both pass spell-check, don't they?

* In case you're wondering, "must of" is #1.

Mmmmm...

This week's post got me thinking:
Doughnut or donut?

Hole & Whole

Either way, it's my favorite part of the donut.

Moose & Mousse

This was a classic homophone in middle school – when spiked, moussed hair was the shit, and no animal embodied the awkward gangliness of adolescence quite like the knobby-kneed moose.
Of course, mousse is also that whipped treat, not quite ice cream, not quite pudding – the puberty of desserts, if you will.

Bridal & Bridle

No jokes about being harnessed into marriage, OK?

A very important question for you:

Gray or Grey?

Sole & Soul

On the left, homonyms: sole, sole, and sole – the bottom of a foot or shoe, the fish, and the last remaining item.
On the right, their homophone: soul – something/someone's inner spirit or essence.

Threw & Through

Threw – Past tense of "throw."
Through – In one end and out the other. Also, to complete a task. So, in the picture, the ball goes through the net, and the game is through as the clock runs out.

Facebook misspellings

I was going to ask you all an important question today, but instead I ran across this great link – on Facebook, of course – and had to share it with you:

the-best-obnoxious-responses-to-misspellings-on-facebook

Funny, yes. But I will ask, do you think correcting spelling is worth it in a context like this? Does it devalue your opinion by taking issue with a person's spelling instead of their meaning? Does pointing out their misspelling devalue their opinion? Is it worth clarifying a post, if you come off like a jerk?

"Pedal" amendment

How embarrassing! I have to come clean: the Pedal & Petal post a couple weeks ago was incomplete.
Apparently spending time outside on the bike and in the garden made the overwhelming presence of capitalism slip my mind. So, to make amends, here is the complete homophone set – Pedal, Peddle, and Petal. Sorry about that!

Hangar & Hanger

Twitter and language

Hey, what if we widen the scope of this blog a bit, to include some general linguistic discussion every so often? Interested? (Or should I just stick to the illustrations?)

To kick it off, a Facebook friend posted a link to this great video of Stephen Fry discussing, among other things, how Twitter fits into the historical continuum of written communication. (Of course, frankly, he could talk about beige carpet and I'd still find it fascinating.) Now I pass it along to you:

So what's your take on it?
What are your thoughts about texting and other abbreviated forms of writing, and their impact on language?