Writing Tip 219: “Internment” vs. “Interment” vs. “Internship”

This is what this poor interned cheetah thinks of your typos.

Some typos—like turning “emulate” into “immolate”—take a dark turn, but then you have other typos that are dark no matter what way you look at them. “Internment” vs. “interment” is one such example.

Remember:

“Internment” is imprisonment or a confinement of some kind, a word often used in reference to wartime camps.
“Interment” refers to the act of burial, the placing of a body into its final resting place.

Then you have “internship,” which is admittedly similar, but not a word that you would ever want to confuse with either of the above on an application.

An “internship,” of course, is a short-term professional position one might apply for to gain experience in a specific trade or industry.

The pronunciation of the word “intern” is also worth a note. If you stress the first syllable (IN-tern), we’re talking about a professional experience. If you stress the second syllable (in-TERN), we’re talking about being locked away. Yes, this is complicated in itself, but for the love of life, please don’t confuse either of these meanings with “inter,” the verb referring to the placing of the deceased in a cemetery, crypt, or tomb.

Whatever internship horror stories you’ve heard, I’m sure they are nothing compared to what can happen with one of these typos. Yikes!

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