10 Misused Words That Can Make You Look Bad

Misusing and confusing words happens to most of us, whether in writing or speaking sometimes it can be a struggle to put in the right word. This may affect your resume or make you look bad when speaking to someone important. It’s important to know the difference between words that seem similar and use them in the right context.

We’ve put together 10 most confusing and misused words and their different meanings. Check them out below.

1. Advise and Advice
Advise is a verb and the‘s’ sounds like a z, while advice is a noun. Advice is what you give when you advise someone.

2. Well and good
Good is an adjective that describes something, if you did a good job, then you’re doing good work. Well is an adverb that describes how something was done, you can do your job well.

3. If and whether
Whether isn’t conditional, “if” is conditional. If a yes/no condition is involved, then feel free to use either.

4. Award and Reward
Award is a prize given as a result of competition, reward is something given in return of effort or merit.

5. Sympathy and Empathy
Sympathy is acknowledging another person’s feelings. Empathy is having the ability to step into the other person’s shoes and relate to how the person feels.

6. Criterion and Criteria
A criterion is a principle or standard. If you have more than one criterion then those are referred to as criteria.

7. Peak and Peek
A peak is the highest point of an object and peek means a quick glance at something.

8. Evoke and Invoke
To evoke is to call to mind, a lost memory. To invoke is to call upon something like help or a higher power.

9. Continuously and continually
Continuously means never ending and continually means it stops and starts.

10. Between and Among
Use between when naming separate individuals or items and use among when there are three or more items but not named separately.