Confusing Words

I really liked the Fiction Factor newsletter this week because of Lee Masterson's article on Heteronyms, Homonyms, Homographs and Homophones. At first glance you might think this a pretty sexy list of words. "Homo" as in similar or alike, "hetero" as in different or opposite, but what are "nyms", "graphs" and "phones"? Think names, maps, and sounds. I especially like Masterson's sentence following this confusing list: pair, pear, pare.

The English language is riddled with such aural ambiguities.

Don't miss the lists at the bottom of the page. They contain probably most of the mistakes that litter digital diaries, other than outright misspellings like misteak and treet, two I spotted last week. [confusing words]

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