December 31st, 2016
In this blog I address three common errors in the use of accept/except, past/passed and height/heighth
Andrew Yiannakis, Ph.D.
Research Professor
University of New Mexico
A. ACCEPT or EXCEPT
(i) To Accept (verb): to receive or take willingly; to recognize as true; to endure without
protest.
protest.
(ii) Except (preposition) : This means “not including something” or “other than”.
Examples: “Everyone has passed EXCEPT John”. And, “the bank is open every day EXCEPT Sunday.
B. PAST or PASSED
(i) Past (adjective): A point in time before the present; refers to time that has gone by, as
in the PAST. Or, “Christine was hired based on her PAST experience in
marketing”.
in the PAST. Or, “Christine was hired based on her PAST experience in
marketing”.
(ii) Passed (verb): The past tense of the verb “to pass”. Examples include, “David PASSED
me on the freeway”; “Duncan PASSED away (e.g., died)”; or, “Roger PASSED the exam”.
me on the freeway”; “Duncan PASSED away (e.g., died)”; or, “Roger PASSED the exam”.
C. HEIGHT or HEIGHTH (note the incorrect presence of an “h” in HEIGHTH)
(i) Height (noun): The distance from the bottom to the top of something as in “Mike is of average HEIGHT” or, “What’s the HEIGHT of the Empire State building?”
(ii) Heighth: An incorrect use of the noun HEIGHT. There is NO “h” on the end of height! And, as an aside, the word is not pronounced with a “th” sound at the end of the word.
NOTE: The terms verb, preposition, adjective and noun are known to as Parts of Speech.
If interested please review my previous blog entitled “Parts of Speech” for a
detailed clarification.
If interested please review my previous blog entitled “Parts of Speech” for a
detailed clarification.
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