Not a very big one, I’d say. Except in certain cases.

Both words can be used regarding distance. There are language purists who maintain that farther refers to physical distance and further to imaginative distance, but common usage does not seem to make that distinction. (If you want to stick to the distinction, it may help to remember that farther has far in it.)

The café is at the farther end of the street.
I can’t walk any farther.
Can you see her at the further end of the corridor?
We can’t get any further – there is a tree across the road.

Further can also mean more, in addition.

We need to look further into this.
Does it need further explanation?
Further (= Furthermore), recent research has shown this to be true.

In examples like the above, use further and not farther.

We can find further in some common sayings:

Nothing could be further from the truth.
We’ll deal with that further down the road (= later on, in the future).
He can’t see further than the end of his nose.
This will be in effect until further notice.
They left without further ado (= immediately, without delay).
Seek no further!
This can be seen as a further expression of her influence on the political development.
Further to our telephone conversation this morning, I am writing to confirm our order for ten ink cartridges.
I have nothing further to add.

Further can also be a verb, meaning promote, develop, help.

What can we do to further her studies?
He only  wants to further his own interests.

In sum, if you want to write farther, do so only when it is a matter of physical distance. You will never be wrong using further.

Read about the difference between furthermore and moreover here.

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The person we are talking about is obviously a professional footballer, but right now he is active on a golf course.

In English there are two ways of expressing an action in the present tense: the present simple and the present continuous.

Present simple

We use the present simple when we talk about

– a permanent (or nearly permanent) situation:

My uncle lives in Spain.
He works as a tourist guide.

– what we do regularly, habits:

Her brother collects rare books.
I drink black coffee in the morning.

– what is always true:

Water boils at 100 degrees Celsius.
A Tesla coil produces high-voltage electric pulses.

– what happens in a book or a film:

The two friends plan a robbery.
At the end she marries a millionaire.

Present continuous

We use the present continuous when we talk about

– things that are happening just now:

The water is boiling, so you’d better find the teabags.
Look, it’s raining!

– a temporary situation:

My uncle is staying at a small hotel during his visit to Paris.
He is practising his French.

– temporary or annoying habits:

I’m spending too much time on Facebook these days.
Mum is always complaining about the mess in my room.

– what we see in a photo:

Here we are waiting for the limousine.
The children are waving to grandma from the balcony.

To sum up:

Use the -ing form when you write about what is going on temporarily and the simple form when you write about what happens regularly.

The same applies to the past:

Past simple

My uncle worked in a bookshop.
I ran to school every morning.

Past continuous

They were running to catch the train.
What were you doing at seven o’clock last night? I tried to call you.

Often past simple and past continuous are used in the same sentence to say that something happened in the middle of something else going on:

I was having breakfast when the doorbell rang.
When Susan came home, her husband was cooking dinner.

In the last example, her husband had started cooking before Susan came home. If he started cooking after she arrived, we would say 

When Susan came home, her husband cooked dinner.

So, to say They are making cars would suggest that the activity is only temporary. Production in a car factory is a long-term activity, and therefore we must write They make cars.

Non-native writers of English may tend to overuse the -ing form. Read more here.

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Was and were are past forms of the verb be, an irregular verb that is extremely common.

We use was in the first person singular (I) and the third person singular (he, she, it):

I was tired and sat down in my favorite armchair.
She was in the kitchen when there was a knock on the door.
It was the first Tuesday in April.

The other persons take the form were:

Were you happy with the result?
We were together.
They were down by the river.

Was and were are also auxiliary verbs, that is, they are followed by another verb:

I was having a nap when you called.
Was he really doing that?
I thought you were going to help her.

It is possible to use were also with I, he, she and it. We do so in situations that are not real. It can be a hypothetical situation (usually with the word if):

Even if he were my boss, I wouldn’t do it.
If I were you, I would definitely accept the offer.
If this were true, you could stay there for a whole month.

It can be wishful thinking:

I wish I were in Rome again.
How I wish that she were here!

This form of the verb is called the subjunctive mood. The were form with you, we and they is also subjunctive in hypothetical or counterfactual statements, even if it does not differ from the indicative form used in ordinary sentences:

If they were younger, I would offer them a job (subjunctive).
They were already there when I arrived (indicative).

You should avoid writing *I wish that she was here. (For the use of the asterisk, read at the end of this text.)

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Just as internet-savvy young people nowadays use fancy abbreviations such as 2Y2 (to you too), CU L8ER (see you later) and TNX (thanks), people in the 1830s also made up funny abbreviations, often based on intended misspellings. They could, for example, write KY for know yuse, meaning no use. All right was abbreviated OW (oll wright). OK was such a misspelling, supposed to mean oll korrect. It became popular when it first appeared in print in the Boston Morning Post in 1839.

In 1840, President Martin van Buren campaigned for reelection, and his supporters chose O.K. as the motto for the campaign. Van Buren’s nickname was Old Kinderhook, and supporters formed O.K. Clubs around the country. In the end, van Buren was not okayed by the voters; his opponent William Henry Harrison won the election.

OK became increasingly popular and is used all over the world in various versions such as okeh, okie, okej, okey, ookoo, owkej, hokay and others.

You can write OK in different ways, with and without full stops and in uppercase or lowercase letters. If you write for a journal, you should consult its style guide. OK is also written okay, and in student slang it became okey-dokey or okie-dokie.

Space people at NASA added a letter; AOK means All OK.

The initialism has its own sign: to signal OK, you form a circle with your thumb and first finger with the other fingers pointing upwards.

You should, however, be cautious about using this OK sign in certain countries, where it might be vulgar or offensive. In Brazil, for example, it is the equivalent of giving someone the middle finger (up yours!). The sign has also become linked to white supremacist groups in the USA.

There have been alternative suggestions about the origin of OK. One theory says that the abbreviation is from the Choctaw language (the Choctaws are a Native American people in the southeastern United States). An example of folk etymology is the belief that OK comes from the Scottish och aye, meaning oh yes. Another explanation points out that the letters OK were stamped on biscuits given to soldiers in the American Civil War. The biscuits came from Orrin Kendall’s bakery. But the most probable explanation is the one from the Boston Morning Post.

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While an acronym is formed from a phrase, a backronym (or bacronym) is a word that is supposed to come from a phrase, but that phrase has been constructed (often humorously) to fit an existing word.

A well-known example of a backronym is posh, meaning stylish, elegant, upper-class. There is a popular belief that posh came from ’port out, starboard home’. It was thought that rich people would book two cabins on their voyage to India and back home, one on the port side of the ship and the other on the starboard. In that way they made sure that they could travel more comfortably, away from the heat of the sun. However, posh was quite simply a slang word in the late 1800s for an overdressed dandy. Another meaning of posh was a small coin, money. 

Another backronym is golf, which is – erroneously – said to come from gentlemen only, ladies forbidden. The word golf is considered to come from Middle Dutch cold, meaning stick or club.

A few more backronyms:

A CAPTCHA is a distorted code you copy on a website to access a page. This is to prevent automated attacks on a website. The acronym is said to mean Completely automated public Turing test to tell computers and humans apart. However, the word is most likely a contrived acronym, in other words, a backronym. It was probably made in analogy with gotcha, ’I have got you’, meaning that you have caught somebody doing something wrong. A gotcha also means a sudden unexpected problem. The interesting thing is that there now is another way to prevent hackers from accessing a web page – and it is called GOTCHA, said to mean Generating panOptic Turing Tests to Tell Computers and Humans Apart. If you don’t know Alan Turing or the Turing Test, read here or here.

The Morse signal SOS is said to mean Save our Ship or Save our Souls. In fact, the alarm signal is …- – -… (three short, three long, three short without any pause), while the letters SOS in Morse code are three short, pause, three long, pause, three short.

Another distress signal is Mayday, mainly used by airplane or ship crews. It is used in voice communication via radio. In a life-threatening emergency the word is repeated three times. The word is said to have been created by Frederick Rockford, a radio officer at Croydon Airport in London in 1923. Mayday supposedly comes from the French m’aidez meaning ‘help me’ or venez m’aider meaning ‘come and help me’. So Mayday is not a backronym.

Neither is May Day, which is something completely different. It refers to the first of May (or the first Monday in May) being a festival in many countries to celebrate the arrival of spring.

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Some words created as acronyms have become so common that people do not know they are acronyms. Some examples:

There are other abbreviations formed by the first letter of each word, but they are pronounced as individual letters. These abbreviations are called initialisms. Some examples:

The most common initialism is probably OK. It is such a popular abbreviation that it deserves its own blog post.

Communicating on the internet has created many abbreviations:

How the first letter in an abbreviation is pronounced determines whether the indefinite article should be written a or an. Compare the following:

In my next blog post you can read about backronyms.

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Many abbreviations are formed by leaving out all except the first few letters of a word. These abbreviations often end with a full stop.

Names of the months are abbreviated according to this general principle of just shortening words.

There is more variation in how the days of the week are abbreviated.

Many abbreviations leave out letters in the middle of a word and end with the last letter of the word. Here are some examples:

Some titles also follow this principle:

You can read more about titles here.

Geographical names are often abbreviated:

Names of the states in the USA are abbreviated to two uppercase letters. You can find them here. The capital Washington is in the District of Columbia, abbreviated DC.

Abbreviations can also become words in their own right and we no longer realise that they are abbreviations.

Hankie (or hanky) is short for handkerchief.

The American colloquialism nabe comes from neighborhood.

Pram is short for perambulator, a carriage for a baby.

Soccer is an abbreviation of association football, which is different from American football.

In American English abbreviations are usually followed by a full stop. In British English this generally applies to abbreviations that are formed by the first letter or the first few letters of a word as in the first table above.

There are many Latin abbreviations in the English language, which you can read about here and here.

Acronyms and initialisms are also abbreviations. Read about them here.

The post Abbreviations appeared first on copyeditor.se.

When you suggest a category or give something as a type example, write like:

Uncle Bill often listens to crooners like Bing Crosby.

Here Bing Crosby represents a specific type of singers, crooners, who often perform in a sentimental way (think of Crosby’s version of White Christmas and you will understand!).

The sentence does not state that Uncle Bill actually listens to Bing Crosby, only that he listens to singers of that type.

When you specify singers that Uncle Bill listens to, use such as:

He collects vinyl records with singers such as Dean Martin, Fred Astaire, Perry Como, Tony Bennett and Nat King Cole.

These singers are generally known as crooners, and here we understand that Uncle Bill has their records.

Some more examples:

You should eat more fruits like oranges.
Citrus fruits such as tangerines, clementines and lemons are rich in C vitamin. 
Advanced tools like robots can reduce production costs.
Robots can take over more complicated tasks such as welding and grinding.
The course covers basic concepts of business administration such as accounting, finance, human resources and marketing.

A songwriter like Leonard Cohen will be remembered forever (Songwriters similar to Cohen will never be forgotten).
A songwriter such as Leonard Cohen will be remembered forever (Leonard Cohen will never be forgotten).

There should not be a comma or a colon after such as, but you can have a comma before such as. Leave out that comma if what comes after such as is additional and essential information.

To sum up:

Use like when you refer to a category (you imply comparison).

Use such as when you give actual examples (you imply inclusion).

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A recipe is something you use in the kitchen. It is a list of ingredients and instructions on how to prepare a dish or make a cake, for example.

When you pay for something you usually get a receipt, a proof of a transaction. Money has been received.

Originally these two words had the same meaning, coming from the Latin word recipere, to receive or take. In 14^th century English both words referred to medicine, not to food. A prescription for a medicine usually started with the word recipe, meaning take.

There is not really much difference between preparing medicine and preparing food – in both cases it is a matter of preparing ingredients – so in the 18^th century recipe began to be used also in the kitchen.

Recipe can also be used metaforically in expressions such as a recipe for disaster or a recipe for success.

In modern language, prescription is used to refer to medicine. The doctor prescribes what medicine you should take.

Then, when you have paid the doctor, he may write out a receipt.

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Basically there is no big difference in meaning between these words. It can be generally said that inquire is the common form in the USA and enquire in Britain.

However, there are writers – particularly in Britain – who make a slight distinction between the two forms of the word. They use enquire simply as a synonym of ask in a general sense. Inquire is used with the meaning of making a formal investigation.

My boss enquired about the passing away of our dog.

The police are making inquiries to find the owner of the abandoned car.

If you write American English, you could use inquire, but otherwise you need not worry about which form is correct. As always, choose one form and be consistent throughout your text!

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