As our language continues to "evolve"...

[avevale_intelligencer]

I notice that the phrase "to home in," common when I was a youngster, is now being misreplaced with increasing frequency by the meaningless phrase "to hone in," presumably from some idea about locating a place or a person being akin to sharpening. I expect that, as with most of these changes, nobody has any idea that it hasn't always been like that, and certainly nobody cares.

I look forward with a certain glum fascination to the first reference to "honing pigeons."

Comments

[keristor.livejournal.com]

Where is this being done? I haven't seen it at all.

[zanda-myrande.livejournal.com]

Here (http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/10/111007102104.htm") and (http://www.bgr.com/2011/08/11/ftc-antitrust-investigators-hone-in-on-android/") there (http://atimes.com/atimes/China/MI28Ad01.html). (That'sjust the first page of Google, right after all the grammar nazis like me saying it's wrong.)

[keristor.livejournal.com]

The first two give me "page not found" and the third looks to me like a typo. On the first page (100 entries) of my Google search just now I found only one case (which could again be a typo) of it being used incorrectly (among lots of uses as a name and correct uses of 'hone'), again in a headline and, one case of a person complaining about it. Both times it seems to be the only time the word is used, no evidence of a consistent or deliberate use. Hardly of epidemic proportions.

Given the proximity of 'n' to 'm', and the similarity of shape and sound, and that speeling chequers won't carch it because it's a valid word, as far as I can see it's an uncaught (before publication) typo. If I complaned about "off by one" errors I'd be rightly pulled up on account of the hundreds of those I make. I find their/there/they're and than/that far more common, 'hone' is buried in the noise.

A rant about the low esteem in which proofing is generally held by publishers is, however, something I support...

[zanda-myrande.livejournal.com]

Okay, (http://www.procurementleaders.com/news/latestnews/4206-procurement-chiefs-hone/) try (http://task.fm/2011/10/how-can-executives-hone-in-on-and-make-use-of-their-best-assets/) these (http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/10/111007102104.htm). I'm (http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/art-collectors-beginning-to-hone-in-on-19th-century-oriental-rugs-131588228.html) not (http://www.ere.net/2011/01/05/matchmaking-job-site-to-hone-in-on-sales-positions/) imagining (http://medicalxpress.com/news/2011-07-hone-protein-precise-role-disease.html) it (http://www.pcworld.com/article/181312/trade_talks_hone_in_on_internet_abuse_and_isp_liability.html). You'll find it in the body of at least two of those as well as the headline. I have also repeatedly heard it used orally on television, and yes, I was watching the speaker's lips move. It's not a proofing error.

[keristor.livejournal.com]

OK, that's fine, what I wanted was evidence because I've never seen it (or if I have then I've auto-corrected it as a typo because it was a single occurrence in the document). I still suspect that the majority are typos, ones which go uncorrected because the words are similar enough to be missed, like all the that/than errors in printed books.

But (also referencing akicif's point) I remember a respected, articulate, literate UK filker getting into an argument with me on {rec/alt}.music.filk becase they insisted that the correct spelling of 'separate' was 'seperate' and wouldn't believe me until I showed them in a dictionary (long before dictionaries were available on the web, probably before either of us had access to the web). And I remember my cousins' parents, one a teacher of English in secondary school and the other with a doctorate from Oxford, having the most weird pronunciations and spellings of words even when confronted with the correct ones (Tolkien, for instance, they both spelt and pronounced (as German) -ein). There are several well-educated SF fans who write Heinlien in the face of the evidence.

And I remember at the turn of the century the proliferation of alternate spellings of 'millenium' and the people insisting that 'milenium' or 'milennium' were correct. Doing a Google search at one point returned more incorrect spellings than correct ones (it's impossible to tell now, because Google 'corrects' what it thinks is an incorrect spelling and mixes them up -- I just tried with 'milennium' and it responded with 144 million matches compared to the 871 thousand for the correct spelling, but then displayed matches for the correct spelling mixed in).

In fact it's been happening all my life, some people just can not get it, the rest of us just ignore them (or in the case of some of your examples decide that a company which puts out that sort of erroneous spelling and refuses to correct it is probably not one with which we want to do business). The way some people do seem to be responding to the errors by telling the companies that they look stupid with misspellings is probably acting as a control on their proliferation. Like most things, cmplaining to the place wher the error occurred will do a lot more good than ranting on a blog which they probbaly don't read...

[akicif.livejournal.com]

No, honestly - it's all over the place. And the rows people get when they try to point out the correct expression are quite scary: see, for example, the usage of got another THING coming versus got another THINK coming....

[keristor.livejournal.com]

See my other reply about 'seperated' and 'milennium'.

In the case of "another thing/think coming", I suspect that both are right, and that those arguing that only one is correct are wrong. Both phrases have probably been in use for long enough that they are both common, probably in different areas. Similarly with "I could/couldn't care less", I've interpreted the former as an abbreviation with implied "but not much", and again it's been around longer than I have.