Errors in English

A.D.



A.D.” does not mean “after death,” as many people suppose. “B.C.” stands for the English phrase “before Christ,” but “A.D.” stands confusingly for a Latin phrase: anno domini (“in the year of the Lord”—the year Jesus was born). If the calendar actually changed with Jesus’ death, then what would we do with the years during which he lived? Since Jesus was probably actually born around 6 B.C. or so, the connection of the calendar with him can be misleading.
Many Biblical scholars and historians, and archeologists prefer the less sectarian designations “before the Common Era” (B.C.E.) and “the Common Era” (C.E.).
All of these abbreviations can also be spelled without their periods.
AM/PM



AM” stands for the Latin phrase Ante Meridiem —which means “before noon”—and “PM” stands for Post Meridiem : “after noon.” Although digital clocks routinely label noon “12:00 PM” you should avoid this expression not only because it is incorrect, but because many people will imagine you are talking about midnight instead. The same goes for “12:00 AM.” Just say or write “noon” or “midnight” when you mean those precise times.
It is now rare to see periods placed after these abbreviations: “A.M.” , but in formal writing it is still preferable to capitalize them, though the lower-case “am” and “pm” are now so popular they are not likely to get you into trouble.
Occasionally computer programs encourage you to write “AM” and “PM” without a space before them, but others will misread your data if you omit the space. The nonstandard habit of omitting the space is spreading rapidly, and should be avoided in formal writing.
ABLE TO



People are able to do things, but things are not able to be done: you should not say, “the budget shortfall was able to be solved by selling brownies.”
ACCENT MARKS



In what follows, “accent mark” will be used in a loose sense to include all diacritical marks that guide pronunciation. Operating systems and programs differ in how they produce accent marks, but it’s worth learning how yours works. Writing them in by hand afterwards looks amateurish.
Words adopted from foreign languages sometimes carry their accent marks with them, as in “fiancé, ” “protégé,” and “cliché.” As words become more at home in English, they tend to shed the marks: “Café” is often spelled “cafe.” Unfortunately, “résumé” seems to be losing its marks one at a time (see under “vita/vitae”).
Many computer users have not learned their systems well enough to understand how to produce the desired accent and often insert an apostrophe (curled) or foot mark (straight) after the accented letter instead: “cafe`.” This is both ugly and incorrect. The same error is commonly seen on storefront signs.
So far we’ve used examples containing acute (right-leaning) accent marks. French and Italian (but not Spanish) words often contain grave (left-leaning) accents; in Italian it’s a caffè. It is important not to substitute one kind of accent for the other.
The diaeresis over a letter signifies that it is to be pronounced as a separate syllable: “noël” and “naïve” are sometimes spelled with a diaeresis, for instance. The umlaut, which looks identical, modifies the sound of a vowel, as in German Fräulein (girl), where the accent mark changes the “frow” sound of Frau (woman) to “froy.” Rock groups like “Blue Öyster Cult” scattered umlauts about nonsensically to create an exotic look.
Spanish words not completely assimilated into English like piñata and niño retain the tilde, which tells you that an “N” is to be pronounced with a “Y” sound after it.
In English-language publications accent marks are often discarded, but the acute and grave accents are the ones most often retained.

ALTOGETHER/ALL TOGETHER



“Altogether” is an adverb meaning “completely,” “entirely.” For example: “When he first saw the examination questions, he was altogether baffled.” “All together,” in contrast, is a phrase meaning “in a group.” For example: “The wedding guests were gathered all together in the garden.” Undressed people are said in informal speech to be “in the altogether” (perhaps a shortening of the phrase “altogether naked” ).
AUTOBIOGRAPHY/BIOGRAPHY



When you write the story of your own life, you write an autobiography; but when you write the story of someone else’s life, it’s just a plain old biography.
e.g./i.e.



When you mean “for example,” use e.g. It is an abbreviation for the Latin phrase exempli gratia. When you mean