Richard Butchins's Blog: Angels stand corrected... - Posts Tagged "never"

Don’t mix up these words - can't remember where I found this due to my continual lapses of memory...

Continual and continuous

Continual = frequently recurring; intermittent—e.g.: “And [the police are] removing [the homeless]—by police rides to the edge of town, by continual issuing of citations for camping, by mass towing of vehicles and by routine discarding of people’s belongings.” ( USA Today; Dec. 3, 1997.)

Continuous = occurring without interruption; unceasing—e.g.: “Crow Canyon archaeologists want to study the twelfth- and thirteenth-century village to determine exactly when it was inhabited and whether it was occupied continuously or intermittently.” ( Santa Fe New Mexican; Sept. 8, 1996.)

The two words are frequently confused, usually with continuous horning in where continual belongs—e.g.:
• “Minutes after the arrest, Wayne Forrest, a Deputy Attorney General helping prosecute the case, told the presiding judge, Charles R. DiGisi, that the sheriff’s office had been engaged in a ‘continuous [read continual ] course of misconduct’ in the Spath case.” ( New York Times; Jan. 18, 1992.)

• “Continuous [read Continual ] interruptions are frustrating because it often means [read they often mean ] you have to warm up all over again or don’t get a complete workout.” ( Montgomery Advertiser; Jan. 1, 1996.)

The two-word phrase almost continuous is correctly replaced by the single-word continual —e.g.: “The antidepressant Prozac has been in the news almost continuously [read continually ] since it was introduced in Belgium in 1986.” ( Tampa Tribune; Nov. 24, 1996.)

A related mistake is to use continuous for something that happens at regular (e.g., annual) intervals—e.g.: “The White House tree-lighting ceremony has been held continuously [read annually ] since 1923.” ( Herald-Sun [Durham, NC]; Dec. 6, 1996.).