Commonly Misused Words in Writing: Principle/Principal - Two/To/Too - Your/You're
Posted: Wednesday, January 24, 2007
by Michelle L Devon
Accentuate Services
Hi there! It's your friendly editor, Michelle L Devon, here to bring you another edition of Commonly Misused Words in Writing. Today, I have selected three sets of commonly misused words I regularly see written improperly in articles found on the internet. Today's words we will discuss are: Principle vs principal, two vs too vs to, and your vs you're.
Defiantly is defined as meaning: rebelliously: in a rebellious manner.
Definitely is defined as meaning: decidedly: without question and beyond doubt.
As you can see, these two words mean very different things, but many times, I see writers using defiantly instead of definitely. The reason for this is most likely because the writer has begun to type the word 'definitely' and spells it incorrectly, and thus Spell Check in MS Word auto corrects the word to 'defiantly'.
I beg of you writers, please be sure to watch for Spell Check grabbing a word and auto correcting it like this and make sure it truly IS the word you intended to use.
Okay, moving right along, let's talk about this article's commonly misused words.
Principle / Principal
The way I learned to remember this word was something my mother, an English major in college, taught me when I was a young child.
Your principal at your school is your pal.
When you are writing about a person who is the leader of a school, he is a principal, not a principle.
The definitions of principle are:
** A rule or standard, especially of good behavior;
** A basic truth or law or assumption;
** Rule of personal conduct
We can take a stand on principle, but you might get detention if you stand on your principal.
The only time it is proper to use princiPAL is if you mean the administrator in a school. Every other instance of these homonyms should use principle.
Two / To / Too
I rarely see the word TWO used improperly, but I frequently see the words TO and TOO interchanged, and they have very different meanings and different parts of speech.
I'll start with TWO since it's the easiest. Two is a number; it comes after one and before three. It cannot be used to mean anything else except a number.
Now, the word TO is a preposition, most frequently used in a prepositional phrase to provide additional information about the subject of the sentence.
Example: He is going TO the store. He is turning left TO get on the highway.
In this example, HE is the subject, and TO is the preposition, part of the prepositional phrase 'to the store'.
However, many people use the word TO instead of the proper word TOO when needing an adverb and not a preposition. Most frequently TOO can be replaced by the word ALSO or the phrase 'in addition'.
Example: Do you want to go with us to the store too?
'To the store' is the prepositional phrase, and as you can see, this sentence can be rewritten as: Do you want to go with us to the store also?
One way to remember when to use TOO instead of TO is to replace it with the word also, because TOO means to add something to the sentence. If you think of it this way, you can remember: when you want to add something to the sentence, you need to add an O on the end of TO. "I want to go too. (I want to go also.)" Add me to the list, because I want to go!
Now, I did say TOO as an adverb, and an adverb usually modifies a word, most frequently a verb but sometimes it can modify another adverb, and in this instance, the word TOO can be used like this:
This is too easy. The test was too hard.
Again, TOO adds an addition - add an O, add information - you are adding a word that modifies - it wasn't just easy or hard - it was too easy or too hard.
Your / You're
Again, I would like to direct you to my article about possessive and contractions.
Your is a pronoun and you're is a contraction that stands for 'you are'. When writing, if you can replace the word you're with the words you are and the sentence still makes sense, then you need to use You're and not Your.
Your is a second person pronoun, meaning something belongs to you. Your chair is over there. Your hat is on the stand. These are your keys, not mine.
As you'll note, you cannot replace you are with your in these sentences: You are chair is over there. You are hat is on the stand. These are you are keys, not mine.
But in this sentence: Are you sure you're okay with this?
You can rewrite this sentence: Are you sure you are okay with this?
Thus you now know when to use your and you're, simply by always replacing you're with the words you are, and if you can't, you must use your.
Okay, that wraps up this installment of commonly misused words in writing. Stay tuned, more articles on this topic are coming, along with some commonly misused phrases in writing too (see - too!).
Keep writing!
This Article has been viewed 9,981 times. (Not updated in real-time.)
More commentsI would love seeing more of this on the 360 blogs.
You wrote: "The only time it is proper to use princiPAL is if you mean the administrator in a school. Every other instance of these homonyms should use principle." This is probably too oversimplified, don't you think? Can I not refer to the principal mountain peak or a principal place of business? What about the principal government official, who may lack principles, but was probably never a Principal, anyway? "Only," "Every," "Always," and "Never" are strong words and should be used only in extreme circumstances. Other than that I appreciate your article and wish/hope others might learn to write right.BMAC is right, and the author is wrong when she says: "The only time it is proper to use princiPAL is if you mean the administrator in a school. Every other instance of these homonyms should use principle." The Principal in a school means the leading or most senior teacher. And so the leading, tallest or otherwise most superior item in any set is always going to be the principal item. e.g. "The chicken had many reasons to cross the road, but the principal reason was to get to the other side". I'm sure Strunk and White should have something to say about this!I agree... I had already stated in another comment that I retracted that. Don't see it anymore though. Ooops. Yes, you both are right and I was in error to word it like that. To be fair to me, at the time I wrote this, I was teaching it to my then 11 year old son and was wanting a quick and easy way to remember. Still, it was in error. Mea culpa.
Michelle, I, too, write articles on misused words, which I post at the forums I moderate. When it comes to your and you're, I find another misuse is your instead of you, as in the following incorrect example: 'I do appreciate your helping me.' The correct use is: 'I do appreciate you helping me.' Otherwise, it needs to be written: 'I do appreciate your help.' I rarely see this given as a misuse/advice but it is one which really annoys me. As an editor, I hope to help writers learn the correct uses of words and thank you for your articles on the subject. Hannah
Is Hannah Quinn correct? My mother taught me that to correctly use the gerund, one would say, "I appreciate your helping me". So which is it???? The internet search I did seemed to suggest that "I appreciate your helping me" is correct.
'Helping' is a noun or an adjective. It is not a verb. It is considered a 'verbal' gerund though, so it retains some verb characteristics, but it is most definitely a noun. Because of this, it requires the possessive form of 'your'. I'm afraid Hannah is incorrect and you are correct about the proper use of gerunds in this instance. If schools still required us to diagram sentences, this would be more clear to us when we say, "I appreciate your helping me." What do you appreciate? Helping. Whose helping? Yours. Car is a noun. You would not say, "I like YOU car." you say, "I like YOUR car." Whose car do you like? Yours. If we used Hannah's first example: I do appreciate you helping me. "I" is the subject / do is grammatically superfluous and can be removed / 'appreciate' is the verb / 'you' is the direct object upon which the verb presents it's action (appreciate) - so what is the helping in this instance? It would try to act as a verb to describe the action of 'me', but 'helping is not a verb. It's a noun. (or adjective, but not in this instance.) Anyway - that's my long way of saying that you are correct, anonymous, and the gerund version of 'help', which is 'helping' is a noun, and the part of speech for the word 'helping' is a noun, and thus requires the possessive 'your' in front of it like any noun would. I appreciate your pointing this out to me. I also appreciate your taking the time to comment.
Oh, and please ignore the its/it's typo I made in my above explanation - just goes to show, even an editor should proofread!
well, unfortunately you are simply wrong about principal -- it is NOT the case that this term is properly used only to describe the head of a school. it means primary -- like princiPAL place of business...And so I said, TWICE in the comments above if you had taken the time to read them.
What about the phrase "principal place of business"? I don't think principle is correct in this case.
You are incorrect when you say the only time you should use princiPAL is when talking about an administrator in a school. The PRINCIPAL reason I mention this is because my PRINCIPLES demand it.
As I have now said FOUR TIMES in previous posts, read the damned comments first!
Hi Michy,Hannah Quinn posted: "I rarely see this given as a misuse/advice but it is one which really annoys me. As an editor, I hope to help writers learn the correct uses of words and thank you for your articles on the subject."Her use of the word "which" is incorrect. It should be "that."
More comments
We want your comments! If you can read this, you don't have javascript enabled, so you can't use this comment system. Please enable javascript.