Linguistic Usage Notes

I will keep a list of particular stylistic notes and errors here that crop up regularly in student writing. 

• 1. "In/with regards to": 

     • "Regard" (n) means "attention" or "concern." 

     • "Regards" is a sign-off or valediction and is short for "With my regards." 

     • In prepositional phrases, one may write either "With regard to" or "As regards." 

     • "In regards to" is just word-salad!

  2. "meaning": 

     • Don't define a term by means of a participial phrase that begins "meaning ... ." Use a relative clause instead. 

     • So, don't write: 

       • "Compatibilism, meaning the idea that freedom and determinism are compatible, ... ." Instead, write: 

       • "Compatibilism, which is the idea the freedom and determinism are compatible, ... ."

  3. "amount" vs. "number"

     • "amount" is used with mass nouns: "the amount of water in the glass"

     • "number" is used with count nouns: "the number of students in the class

  4. Fancy words. None said it better than E.B. White: 

Do not be tempted by a twenty-dollar word when there is a ten-center handy, ready and able. … If you admire fancy words, if every sky is beauteous, … every intelligent child prodigious, if you are tickled by discombobulate, you will have a bad time with Reminder 14. What is wrong, you ask, with beauteous? No one knows, for sure. There is nothing wrong, really, with any word — all are good, but some are better than others. A matter of ear, a matter of reading the books that sharpen the ear.

— Reminder 14 from E.B. White's supplement to Oliver Strunk's Elements of Style

5. "effect" vs. "affect" (as verbs): 

1. • To effect is to bring about. To affect is to change or modify. 

   • Note that as substantives, an effect is something that is caused, and an affect is an emotional state or mood.