Troublesome Homophones


If there is one area where I am apt to be a member of the grammar police, it would be in the area of homophones. I hate it when a writer uses there when they really should be using they’re or their.

One homophone that we recently disagreed about at work was pore and pour. Most of us thought that “we poured over material” as we studied. However, one person argued that we should have used the word “pored”. We looked it up on google and I found four sources that said the word was pored, not poured. We pour milk over our cereal, but this word has nothing to do with studying. Here are numerous homophones to check and determined that you have used the correct word.

The Most Common Problematic Homophones

Too, two, to;

there, their, they’re; 

where, wear, ware,

its it’s;

accept, except  

principle/principal

write/right

current/currant

allowed/aloud

desert/dessert

bear/bare

cite/site/sight

forward/foreword

groan/grown

here/hear

idle/idol

no, know

joule/jewel

lie/lye

morning/mourning

neigh/nay

owed/ode

quartz/quarts

reign/rein/rain

seen/scene

vial/vile

week/weak

yolk/yoke

If you have any question about the proper usage of these words, be sure to google them to discover how each word would be used in a sentence.

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2 comments
  1. I rarely run into trouble on this.The nuns taught us well. I will mess up, occasionally, on the rarely used ones, but I credit that to advancing age. lol

    • 1authorcygnetbrown said:

      I rarely do either. Often to me, the homophones sound slightly different to me.

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