Editor's Blog2 mins ago
Why Have People Started Saying Headed Instead Of Heading?
57 Answers
Example, where are you heading? Surely not where are you headed? Which is what I am hearing more and more.
Answers
Best Answer
No best answer has yet been selected by dave50. Once a best answer has been selected, it will be shown here.
For more on marking an answer as the "Best Answer", please visit our FAQ.Language changes constantly. So long as it's understood what's meant, that's the most important thing. Sure, you can achieve that by trying to stick to rigid, immutable rules about what words mean or how they should be spelled, but English has never worked like that, and trying to enforce such rules in the long run has never worked.
That's not to say it isn't irritating when a "rule", or rather what you think ought to be a rule, gets broken. One that has annoyed me lately is the confusion of "reign" for "rein", in particular in phrases such as "free reign", "taking the reigns", etc. Because they sound the same as the correct ones, and because it's not even that wrong in terms of literal meaning, I suspect these versions could easily start to catch on more widely in future. Although, hopefully they don't!
Snobbishness about these things never helps, though -- and often turns out to be just as incorrect, if not more so, by trying to impose rules where none had ever existed.
That's not to say it isn't irritating when a "rule", or rather what you think ought to be a rule, gets broken. One that has annoyed me lately is the confusion of "reign" for "rein", in particular in phrases such as "free reign", "taking the reigns", etc. Because they sound the same as the correct ones, and because it's not even that wrong in terms of literal meaning, I suspect these versions could easily start to catch on more widely in future. Although, hopefully they don't!
Snobbishness about these things never helps, though -- and often turns out to be just as incorrect, if not more so, by trying to impose rules where none had ever existed.
Related Questions
Sorry, we can't find any related questions. Try using the search bar at the top of the page to search for some keywords, or choose a topic and submit your own question.