An or A? While or Whilst? Lose or Loose?

One of the curses of being a copywriter and technical author is that you become hypersensitive to common writing errors. And the older I get, the worse it seems to annoy me. And they are everywhere. Look on the web or browse through the local newspaper and you’ll find them, from minor grammatical errors such as split infinitives to more obvious incorrect use of language or inappropriate apostrophe use. So I thought I would vent my spleen about a few writing mistakes that have caught my attention recently:

An or A?

This one crops up all the time, especially in newspapers. Technically, you can use either, but the more accepted version is to use ‘an’ before a vowel sound and ‘a’ before a harder, consonant sound. So, ‘an aeroplane’, ‘an elevator’, and ‘a motorbike’, ‘a concrete block’ etc. Where some confusion comes in is with words that begin with ‘h’. Because in the UK many people drop the ‘h’ as they speak, so ‘horrible’ sounds like ‘orrible’. And this is the scenario where you will most likely see both ‘an’ and ‘a’ used, especially with ‘an historic’ and ‘a historic’. Personally, I always go for ‘a historic’ because you should pronounce the ‘h’ (even though I don’t). With ‘h’, you can get away with either, but in other cases, to be safe, you should follow the ‘vowel sound’ rule.

While or Whilst?

This one is a bit easier. In the UK, they can both be used, but ‘whilst’ is seen as archaic and is not in use in US English. While the more patriotic among you will probably see that as reason enough to continue the use of ‘whilst’, you really should resist the temptation. Because language develops all the time, and if you want your copy to be simple, concise, friendly, and ultimately more effective, you should use the simplest form of the word. And that means ‘while’. Think about the impression you are trying to create. Are you trying to sound stuffy and old-fashioned? Because that’s the tone you are setting when you use ‘whilst’. So you may as well use ‘thou’, ‘hast’ and various other Shakespearian era words too.

My advice? Embrace the future and go for while. But don’t embrace the future too much or you’ll end up writing in txtspk and that way leads to madness.

Lose or Loose?

This is probably the most common error I see in people’s writing (generally, not professional writers, but there have been one or two instances), and it is one that annoys me the most – because it creates different meaning. Invariably, people misuse ‘loose’ when they mean ‘lose’. Why so many people confuse the two, I don’t know, but let’s put them straight: ‘loose’ means relaxed, slack, casual; ‘lose’ means to misplace or shed. So, you lose weight, not loose; the belt is loose, not lose.

And that marks the end of today’s lesson, children.

SEO copywriter, Web copywriter, Web content writer