Verses versus versus
They’re at it again – smart people who confuse similar-sounding words. Spellchecker tells you they’re correctly spelled, but can’t tell you how to use them.
In an article about a company’s accounting woes, I saw:
They could have prevented the disparage …
OK, class, disparage is a verb. It means to speak negatively about someone or something. In slang terms, disparage means bad-mouth. In any case, it cannot function as the direct object of the verb prevented.
The word this writer was going for is disparity. It is a noun, and it has nothing to do with bad-mouthing. It means difference. In the article, it was clear that the writer meant the funds reported from two sources did not match. It would have been appropriate to disparage whoever was responsible for the disparity.
An otherwise informative article discussed the merits of various seat choices on airplanes.
Some people prefer an isle seat …
Isle is a shortened, somewhat poetic form of island. As in The Isle of Capri or Ireland, the Emerald Isle. Better to be in either of those places than stuck on an airplane in any seat. That narrow passage where they push the food carts and whack your elbows is the aisle.
I almost hesitate to include sports writers in the “smart people” category, although there are many smart sports writers. Sadly, some were hired for their subject knowledge despite their abysmal use of English. In a field where face-offs are common, team against team, individual against individual, or individual against record, you’d think this one would never occur. But it does:
Next week’s matchup features the Angels verses the Red Sox …
Unless the contest requires baseball players to go head-to-head in a freestyle rap competition, spontaneously spouting rhyming couplets, they mean versus.
Versus comes from Latin, and it means against, or opposed to. It can be spelled out or abbreviated either vs or v (in legal usage, with or without periods after). As in Angels versus Red Sox, Marbury vs. Madison, or Roe v Wade.
Some errors just drive me to curses –
All tact and decorum disperses.
…..There’s you’re and there’s your,
Two, to, too and more,
And don’t forget verses v. versus!
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