Gotcha Grammar: Commonly Swapped Words

Thanks to expanding technology, today there are more ways than ever for businesses like yours to reach potential customers or patients. You can create marketing content on your website, post on social media, publish a video online, create a billboard ad, you name it.

Most of the ways you reach customers, though, involve some type of writing. That means there’s always an opportunity to make unfortunate grammatical errors, and these types of errors have more of an impact on your marketing than you realize. These mistakes can create the impression that you’re less attentive or even less intelligent. Your potential patients are seeing messaging from your competitors on a regular basis, and if they see that you’re making mistakes that your competitors aren’t, you won’t be the first professional they call.

To help you maintain a positive image, our professional marketing writers at McCauley Marketing Services are clearing up some of the most commonly swapped words we notice in marketing content.

Compliment vs. Complement and Complimentary vs. Complementary

The words “compliment” and “complement” are tricky because they can have a few different meanings. “Compliment” is either a nice comment or a piece of praise, or the act of giving praise. You can pay someone a compliment or you can compliment someone. “Complement,” on the other hand, can be a verb that means to go well with something else or it can be a noun referring to something that goes well with the item you’re talking about. For instance, chocolate complements peanut butter but at the same time, peanut butter is a perfect complement to jelly.

“Complimentary” and “complementary” are often misused too. Both are adjectives. If someone is complimentary, it means that they are giving you a lot of compliments. If something is complimentary, it is free. On the other hand, if something is complementary to something else, it means those two items go well together.

Check Out vs. Checkout

“Check out” and “checkout” are essentially two forms of the same word. “Check out” is the verb form, so it refers to the action of checking out, such as, “I need to check out of my hotel.” “Checkout,” though, can be the noun or adjective form of the word. For example, you might say, “I need a late checkout from my hotel room” or “I’m going to the checkout counter.”

This same rule applies with many similar phrases: it should be two words if it’s a verb, but it should be either one compound word or a hyphenated word if it’s a noun or adjective. Consider examples like, “sign up for our newsletter” compared to “fill out our sign-up sheet,” and “Take out a pen” compared to “I placed a take-out order.”

Assure vs. Ensure vs. Insure

Assure, ensure, and insure sound similar and they’re all verbs, but they have very different meanings. “Assure” means to tell someone something with great confidence. For example, “I assure you that I’ll be ready in time.” “Ensure” means to make sure of something, such as, “It’s my job to ensure that the project is done on time.” Finally, “insure” means to protect something with an insurance policy, such as “Don’t forget to insure your car.”

Site vs. Sight vs. Cite

People often mistake site, sight, and cite because they hear people say the words and don’t always realize which spelling they are using. “Site” is a noun that refers to a location, like your business website, your worksite, or the site of an event. “Sight” is a noun that refers to either your vision or something that you’ve seen. This is the spelling you’d use when you talk about “visiting a city to see the sights.” “Cite,” then, means to reference something, such as, “He said we were breaking the law and cited the city’s law against jaywalking.”

Any time you’re writing content that the public will see, whether it’s a blog for your website, an ad for a magazine, or just a sign on your office door, you are making either a positive or negative impression. Understanding the difference between certain commonly mistaken words is a first step toward making sure that the impression you make is a positive one.

If you prefer not to take chances and you’d rather leave the writing to professionals who are skilled in crafting the perfect content for your business like our team of writers, contact McCauley Marketing Services today. For more tips, follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.