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How many times have you read, or heard in films, the phrase ‘The prodigal son returns’? 

Not only is it a little tired and predictable, people tend to use it wrongly.

Rain, reign or rein? People often make mistakes when choosing between homophones (words that sound the same but have different spelling and different meanings). I see errors in the use of ‘reign’, ‘rein’ (and, occasionally, ‘rain’) almost every week.

Here’s how to sort them out.

‘Thus’ or ‘therefore’? There is endless confusion about these two words.
But be warned: the confusion is made even worse by faulty (read, ‘plain wrong’) advice offered on several so-called ‘language learning’ sites.

The difference between the two words is quite straightforward.

Loathe or loath? People often confuse these words. They have similar origins and both are related to negative feelings but they mean quite different things.

Usually, the reason for errors is not knowing whether to put in the ‘e’.

‘Appraise’ or ‘apprise’? Are you confident about which you should use?

As an editor, I frequently correct errors in the use of these similar sounding words. Sometimes, predictive text is to blame; the tools don’t always know the difference and often seem to prefer ‘appraise’…

If you were to ask one hundred people for the definition of ‘trite’, I predict a large percentage would say it means ‘silly’, ‘superficial’, ‘inconsequential’, ‘trivial’ or something similar. That’s not what it means, though.

We can use one or more of those words to describe something which also happens to be trite, but the words aren’t directly related. None of the words is a synonym of ‘trite’.