Aye, Eye, I: Homophonia!

Susan Pierotti, Creative Text Solutions What are Homophones? Simply put, homophones are words that sound the same, from the Greek 'homo' meaning 'same' and 'phone' meaning 'sound'. Other words derived from these two words include: homosexual - same sex telephone -far sounding euphonium - pleasant sounding object (though some may dispute the object in question...)   Why do I need to know what homophones are? Homophones are the reasons that many of us have trouble with spelling. Words that sound the same trip us up as we try to remember which (witch!) word we want to write. The UK website http://www.singularis.ltd.uk/bifroest/misc/homophones-list.html lists 441 homophones and that is probably not an exhaustive list. Some of the homophones listed there are: stationary and stationery maize and maze [caption id="attachment_84" align="aligncenter" width="150"] maize[/caption] [caption id="attachment_85" align="alignright" width="120"] maze[/caption] fare and fair male and mail   Some tips to help you Here are some tips to help you with some of the more common ones. Hear and here: Think of whether you want to refer to a place or the sense that is perceived through the ear. You need an ear to hear: you need to be here, not there. The similarities in spelling of ear/hear and here/there will give you a clue how to spell hear and here correctly. Principle and principal: Principle is a noun, a thing. Principal is an adjective (sometimes doing the work of a noun, but let's not get too complicated!). Both words have their origins in the idea of 'prime', 'primary' 'first things'. For instance, your head teacher is the principal teacher, the first teacher, in the school. He has principles but he is the principal. If you're not sure which one to use, see if it makes sense if you can add another word afterwards, such as: The principal discussed the principle behind the proposal. Can you add a word after principal? (Yes - teacher.) Can you add one after 'principle'? Only if you spell it the other way. My blogs on there, they’re, their  and it’s and its offer more clues. They can be found at http://creativetextsolutions.wordpress.com/2014/03/04/its-or-its-its-easy  and http://creativetextsolutions.wordpress.com/2014/03/13/there-theyre-t…l-be-all-right  If you are still unsure, a professional editing and proofreading service will be able to solve all your spelling problems. Contact me at http://www.creativetext.com.au for all your proofreading and editing needs.