Wow! Even The NYTimes Has "The Right Word"

Almost MyRightWord.

A column entitled The Right Word by Philip B. Corbett appeared in the New York Times in the After Deadline series which

examines questions of grammar, usage and style encountered by writers and editors of The Times. It is adapted from a weekly newsroom critique overseen by Philip B. Corbett, the deputy news editor who is also in charge of The Times’s style manual. The goal is not to chastise, but to point out recurring problems and suggest solutions.

An example:

Words to Watch: Cement vs. Concrete

I frequently point out words that we mix up because they sound the same: principle/principal, reign/rein, etc.

Other pairs of words don’t sound alike but trip us up because their meanings are related. Careful readers, including some in the cement industry, are quick to point it out when we confuse cement and concrete. We’ve done it so often over the years that the words earned their own entry in The Times’s stylebook:

cement. Use concrete instead to mean the material that forms blocks, walls and roads. One ingredient is cement, the binding agent that is mixed with water, sand and gravel.

or

More Words to Watch: Podium vs. Lectern

This pair of puzzlers also figures in the stylebook:

podium, lectern. A speaker stands on a podium and at or behind a lectern.

We frequently say “podium” when we mean “lectern” (the confusion never seems to go the other way). It may help to remember that a podiatrist takes care of your feet, and a podium is the thing under your feet. Lectern resembles “lecture” or “lector” and is where you put the notes to read during your lecture.

and

Tinkerbell, Digitally Altered

Here’s word mix-up I hadn’t noticed till a careful reader pointed it out: pixelated vs. pixilated.

According to our archive, on 42 occasions in the last year we used a word to describe an image that is or seems to be made up of pixels, as on a TV or computer screen (the word also can refer to an image that has been digitally blurred to be unrecognizable). Twenty-three times we spelled it “pixilated” and 19 times “pixelated.” So which is it?

It should be “pixelated” — note the “e” in the middle, reflecting the “e” in “pixel.”

The problem is, many dictionaries have not yet included this relatively new term (the online O.E.D. is an exception). But dictionaries do include an older, more obscure and entirely unrelated word — “pixilated,” with an “i” in the middle, derived not from “pixel” but from “pixie.” It means “eccentric, daft, whimsical,” suggesting someone under the influence of pixies.