What’s the difference between unsatisfied and dissatisfied?
UNSATISFIED
When you are unsatisfied, you are not yet satisfied or fulfilled. There is incompleteness, a lack of something. You are not getting everything that is needed. Unsatisfied can refer to both people and things and ideas.
Children often feel an unsatisfied hunger for love and acceptance. The defendant argued that the obligations under the contract were unsatisfied.
DISSATISFIED
When you are dissatisfied, you feel unhappy, displeased, disappointed, frustrated. Dissatisfied refers to how people feel.
Fred was dissatisfied with the wallpaper in his living-room.
Fred was dissatisfied with the wallpaper in his living-room
To sum up,
Unsatisfied = unfulfilled Dissatisfied = annoyed, not happy
Price refers to the amount of money you pay when you buy something.
The price of coffee had gone up by 12%.
Price is also used figuratively in the sense of consequence or cost:
He had to pay a high price for his support of the party’s failed candidate.
Price can also be used as a verb meaning to put a price on something, to say how much something costs or is worth.
He was reluctant to price the old furniture. The young couple thought the house was priced too high. Entrance is priced at €7 for adults and €5.50 for children.
To price in (with the stress on in) has two meanings:
1. To include the cost of something in the total price
You need to price in the cost of packaging and freight.
2. To consider a factor when deciding a price
We must price in the risk of increased raw material costs.
This price for a cellphone seems exorbitant
PRIZE
Prize (with a voiced s-sound) refers to an award earned in a competition or through talent. It is associated with achievement and recognition.
My daughter won first prize in the baking competition.
A prize flower or animal is one that is of very good quality, one that has won or deserves to win a prize.
A prize idiot is the same as a complete idiot.
As a verb, to prize has two meanings:
1. To value highly
That old photo is one of my most prized possessions.
2. To force open (sometimes also spelled prise)
I prized the lid open with a spoon. She prised the little boy’s fingers apart and took the pill from him.
Knowing when and how to use brackets and parentheses can be challenging. We will try and sort out the problem here.
Round brackets
Round brackets are used
to add extra information in text
Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519) is considered one of the greatest artists ever. Cary Grant (born as Archibald Leach) starred in over seventy films.
to add personal comment
Hum in Croatia is the smallest town in the world (and very beautifully situated on top of a hill).
to define an abbreviation or acronym
UNITAR (The United Nations Institute for Training and Research) has its headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland.
to refer to another part of the same text
Exports increased by 6 % (Table 3). Production time can be reduced by using a new application (see Chapter 6).
in referencing
Such methods are based on direct observation (Jones et al., 2012).
Square brackets
Square brackets are used
to show that text has been added to a quotation
Several new products were introduced [on the company’s website].
to show that part of a quotation has been omitted (by using an ellipsis)
Relatives, friends and neighbours as well as his landlord, his employer, his former professor […] had all come to congratulate him.
(The Chicago Manual of Style recommends using the three dots without brackets. The Modern Language Association, on the other hand, recommends brackets to distinguish this kind of ellipsis from an ellipsis in the original text.)
when you capitalize the first letter of a quotation that is not capitalized in the original (or use lowercase where the original is capitalized)
Original:
The professor said, ”Perhaps the best example of Renaissance architecture is St. Peter’s Basilica in Vatican City”.
Paraphrased:
The professor told his students that ”[p]erhaps the best example of Renaissance architecture is St. Peter’s Basilica in Vatican City”.
around the Latin abbreviation sic (read more here).
To sum up:
Use parentheses to add information to something you have written.
Use brackets to change or add comments to somebody else’s words that you are quoting.
Braces (Curly brackets)
Curly brackets are mainly used in computer programming, mathematics, and science. They often identify the elements of a set.
Angle brackets (Chevrons)
Angle brackets are seldom used in English. They may indicate a website or something said in a foreign language. In some languages, double angle brackets are used instead of quotation marks.
Brackets and parentheses are punctuation marks used to set apart a segment of text from the surrounding text. (By the way, parentheses is the plural form of parenthesis).
You are, of course, aware of the fact that British English and American English do not always agree. BE lift is elevator in AE; a BE pavement is a sidewalk in AE. Holiday is vacation, handbag is purse, queue is line, tube is subway, etc.
When it comes to brackets and parentheses, the situation is just as confusing.
These marks
are called brackets or round brackets in British English. In American English they are parentheses.
Brackets in American English are called square brackets in British English. They look like this:
Then we have these:
They are called braces in both British and American English, but in BE they are also called curly brackets.
Historically, the earliest form of brackets were angle brackets or chevrons. They look like this:
In a later post we take a look at how to use these brackets and parentheses.
Sic comes from Latin and means so, thus, in this manner.
Sic erat scriptum means so written, thus it had been written.
When quoting something, writers may use sic to indicate that a word or phrase that looks wrong is indeed an exact reproduction of the original—the mistake appears in the source. Quotations should always be in their original form.
Sic is usually written in square brackets: [sic]. The word sic is often seen as a loanword that does not require italics, but in the United States, sic is usually italicized.
Sic can be used to mark an actual error or misprint or a conspicuous detail in the text, a word that seems odd or erroneous.
Since sic is used to draw the reader’s attention to a mistake by the writer, it often indicates disapproval and may signal superciliousness or be condescending. You should use caution when writing [sic] in order not to sound haughty or malicious.
There [sic] son had graduated from Cambridge. The correct spelling is, of course, their.
She carries out research at the John [sic] Hopkins University. This is a common error. The correct name is Johns Hopkins University, named after the entrepreneur and benefactor Johns Hopkins. His great-grandmother’s name was Margaret Johns; she married Gerard Hopkins and they named their son, the benefactor’s grandfather, Johns Hopkins. His grandson had the same name.
You can find a number of Latin abbreviations used in English here.
The apostrophe is a punctuation mark in the Latin and some other alphabets. It is used to indicate quotations, to show that one or more letters are left out (contractions), to show the possessive form (genitive) of names and nouns, and to mark the plural of single letters.
QUOTATION
In UK English, single quotation marks are commonly used (even if the US English system is also accepted), while US English prefers double quotation marks.
UK English: ’Welcome to London’, he said.
US English: A man appeared in the doorway asking, ”Is there a restroom somewhere here?”
When a quote appears inside another quote, the opposite style of quotation marks is used:
UK English: The woman looked at the policeman and said, ’All I heard was ”I can’t find my keyes”’.
US English: The woman looked at the officer and said, ”All I heard was ’I can’t find my keyes.’”
In a contraction, an apostrophe represents one or more letters that have been omitted.
I’ve I have I’d I had or I would He’s He is They’re They are She can’t She cannot You mustn’t You must not Singin’ in the rain Singing in the rain O’Leary [descendant] of Leary Rock’n’roll Rock and roll
An apostrophe can represent thousand:
15’ = 15 000
An apostrophe can replace the first two numbers in a year:
This was popular in the ’80s = in the 1980s
POSSESSIVE
An apostrophe is used with an s after names or nouns to show ownership or close connection.
This is the boy’s room Let me introduce my wife’s best friend
In the plural, there is no s after the apostrophe:
This is the boys’ room
Especially in spoken language, the plural is expressed using of: This is the room of the boys.
Not quite right…
PLURAL OF LETTERS
An apostrophe is used to mark the plural of single letters:
It’s hard to distinguish between your g’s and q’s.
Mind your p’s and q’s (be careful about what you say or do).
Don’t confuse an apostrophe with an accent! Read more here.
False friends are words in two languages that look and/or sound alike but whose meanings are completely or partially different. The two words may have—and often do have—the same origin (If they do not have the same origin, they are called false cognates).
It is clear that false friends may give rise to amusing and sometimes embarrassing mistakes, but they can also cause potentially disastrous misunderstandings with serious consequences.
Here are some examples of English false friends in other languages (The first letter in German nouns is upper-case):
English–French
car
coach, bus, van
cave
cellar, basement, nightclub
figure
face
journal
newspaper, magazine
lecture
reading, reading matter
location
renting, hiring; lease, reservation
radio
X-ray
route
road
sensible
sensitive
smoking
dinner-jacket, tuxedo
English–German
also
so, thus
blank
shiny, bright
chef
leader, boss
chips
potato crisps
fatal
awkward, embarrassing
gift
poison, venom
hall
sound, echo
kind
child
lack
varnish, lacquer
list
cunning, trick
mode
fashion
plump
awkward; crude; obvious
smoking
dinner-jacket, tuxedo
still
quiet, silent
taste
key (on a keyboard)
English–Italian
brace
embers, charcoal
cute
skin
due
two
fame
hunger, starvation
fare
do, make
media
average
replica
repetition; reply
smoking
dinner-jacket, tuxedo
stile
stylus
turbine
whirlwind, swirl
English–Spanish
actual
current, topical, fashionable
cabaret
nightclub
editor
publisher
eventual
possible; temporary
particular
private, personal
sensible
sensitive; responsive; emotional
villa
small town, municipality
virtual
potential, possible
English–Swedish
art
species
barn
child
bra
good, well
fart
speed
faster
aunt
frisk
healthy; fresh
from
pious
glass
ice cream
kiss
pee
semester
vacation
slut
end
smoking
dinner-jacket, tuxedo
You can read about my book on English–Swedish false friends and other treacherous words here.
It may be difficult to understand the difference between critic and critique.
A critic in English refers to a person. It is someone who criticizes something, in other words, expresses criticism.
A critic is also someone who gives an opinion about books, films, music, etc., usually professionally in a paper or magazine or on radio or television. A critic writes a review.
Future critic?
A critique is a detailed analysis and assessment, usually of a literary, philosophical, or political theory.
The problem for Swedish speakers of English is that both criticism and critique correspond to the same word in Swedish, kritik, and that critic can be mistakenly taken to mean kritik.
The words technique and technology are related to each other, but it is important to understand the difference between them.
TECHNIQUE
Technique refers to how you carry out a particular task, an efficient way of achieving something or the skill needed to do so. In order to swim fast, for example, you need a good technique. The corresponding adjective is technical.
Technique
TECHNOLOGY
Technology is applied science, the use of scientific knowledge and methods to accomplish a task. Technology is used to improve products and services. The corresponding adjective is technological.
Technology
To sum up, technology gives us the tools and technique determines how the tools are used.
What’s the difference between biannual and biennial?
The two words biannual and biennial are easily confused.
Both come from Latin bi-, twice, and annus, year.
Biannual means occurring twice a year, and biennial means occurring every second year – think of the Venice Biennial (in Italian la Biennale di Venezia).
Perhaps you polish your car or clear out your garage twice every year – then that is a biannual activity. If you go to a conference that is held every two years, you attend a biennial conference.
Biennial can also refer to a plant that blooms or bears fruit in its second year and then dies.
Instead of biannual, you can write semiannual; both words refer to something happening twice a year or every half year.
Biweekly and bimonthly don’t have this distinction – there is no vowel as in annus that could show the difference. Biweekly could mean both twice a week and once every second week. A bimonthly magazine could be one that is published twice a month or every two months. As a writer, you need to make it clear what you intend to say.
The Venice Biennial is one of the most prestigious cultural festivals in the world
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