More Homophones - The Grammar-Us Blog - Grammar-Us

You may remember that, several weeks ago, I dedicated a blog post to "there," "their," and "they’re" --homophones (words that sound alike but are spelled differently and mean different things). In that post, I mentioned that there were more such words in the English language, but it occurs to me that perhaps it would be helpful to give you a quick guide to some others that may cause a dilemma for you in your writing. Accordingly, here’s a half dozen of some of the most commonly misused homophones:

• Your = Belonging to you (Example: I hope your mother can join us for lunch.)
  

• You’re = You are (Example: You’re not going to believe this!)
  

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• Capital = The seat of government in a country or state (Example: The capital of Texas is Austin.)  
  

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• “Capital” can also mean wealth in the form of money or other assets (Example: The company was seeking venture capital to use for expansion.)  
  

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• A third definition of “capital” is the top portion of an architectural column (Example: You can tell the difference between Greek and Roman columns by looking at the design of their capitals.)
  

• Capitol = A building. (Example: The United States Congress is located in the Capitol.)
  

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• Principal = First in order of importance, main (Example: The principal reason I write this blog is to educate people about correct grammar.)  
  

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• “Principal” can also be used to refer to the original sum of money (Example: The total house payment includes principal and interest.)
  

• Principle = A fundamental truth that serves as a foundation for a system of belief or a chain of reasoning (Example: Our company was founded on principles of integrity and good customer service.)
  

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• Brake = The mechanism on a vehicle that makes the vehicle stop, or the act of stopping (Example: I brake for animals.)
  

• Break = To separate or cause to separate into pieces, or to interrupt (Example: My lunch break is 30 minutes.)
  

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• Stationery = Writing paper (Example: He wrote the letter on his personalized stationery.)
  

• Stationary = Staying in the same place (Example: Marta rides a stationary bicycle at the fitness center every day.)
  

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• Compliment = A  polite expression of admiration. (Example: Teresa received many compliments on her beautiful dress.)
  

• Complement = A thing that completes or brings to perfection (Example: That color of eye shadow really complements your eye color.)
  

I hope you find these helpful. There are many more confusing homophones in our weird English language, and I will share more of them with you in future blog posts.





BONUS TIP:

This is not a homophone, but it is so often misspelled that I feel compelled to write about it:

The past tense of the verb "lead" is NOT "lead."  Instead, the past tense is LED.  Please, please, PLEASE memorize this!

A good way to remember it is that, to form the past tense of most verbs, you add "ed" to them.  When you want the past tense of "lead," just make sure that the "e" and the "d" are next to each other. You will get LED, and you will make this old grammarian very, very happy!