You remember the character Cyclops in the X-Men comics and movies, how if you take off his magic sunglasses, his “optic blast” superpower sprays everywhere, uncontrollable, until he shuts his eyes? That’s what it’s like to be a professional proofreader sometimes; you just can’t help but see the errors people make when they write, even when you’re not on the clock and you’re just out and about in the real world, trying to mind your own business. The really annoying thing is that you tend to see the same damn errors over and over again, too. Stuff that really isn’t that hard but which, for some reason, consistently trips up otherwise intelligent and well-spoken people.
Case in point (you knew I had one, didn’t you?): I was just perusing some reader comments over at the Tribune web site and I see that someone thinks that “Draper [City] has a huge cross to bare.” (Italics mine.) So… that would be an undressed cross? Perhaps you mean one that hasn’t been varnished or painted? Or perhaps the expression you’re really searching for is “cross to bear.”
It’s very simple, people: “bare” means naked. You bare your body, you bare your soul. “Bear” means “to support, carry, or endure.” You bear your load (which is what that old cliche about cross-bearing is getting at), you bear children, you grin and bear it. See how easy? Sheesh…
Actually, if they have a “cross to bare,” I guess that means the cross is currently clothed (or painted or varnished). Otherwise, there’d be no need to bare it.
</smartass>
Ah, you got me, Brian. Very astute.
(cursing under my breath for getting shown up in my own rant, grumble grumble grumble)
🙂
OK, so this is the second time today that X-men has come up for me. My brother just told me that my college figures prominently in Professor Xavier’s (and other character’s) histories. Huh. How I missed that, I don’t know. How sad that their most well-known alumnus is fictional.
But, anyway….
Yeah, “bare” and “bear.” That bugs me, too. There are so many of those that bug me, but I’ve actually spent time thinking about this one in the past because it’s such a common mistake for people to make.
He got you! You have to just bare it.
I regularly get pleadings to bare in mind this or that in many office communications. Unlike typos (such as we need to asses the costs or I will publish daft document), it certainly shows an educational gap, but at some point, one just feels silly pointing out such things to colleagues…
I wonder if the confusion is caused by the noun usage of bear, which I think is more common in daily usage to people. They want to use the phrase they have heard, but when they write it they think, “wait…that is a fuzzy creature, it must be bare.” just my bare two cents.
Why anyone would examine user comments anywhere with great attention to detail is beyond me. Thanks for clearing up the bear/bare homophone for me though.
Well, Robbie, it’s not that I deliberately study user comments “with great attention to detail”… I simply can’t help but see errors in things. It’s an occupational hazard that can sometimes be pretty damn annoying. But it is my cross to bear. (See what I did there?)
And you’re welcome. 🙂
I love you. I cannot imagine the angst you deal with seeing so many errors but….I love you.
Well, thanks, Marnie! I’ll take all the support I can get… 🙂
(Incidentally, is this the Marnie I worked with at McCann? Or a whole new Marnie? Either way, welcome…)
How about if the word bear/bare means to reveal the results, as in the following instance? “But if it’s performed now as the medical records bare out might be a possibility, given her distinct worsening after the second accident and the literature that bares out, you don’t really have adjacent segment disease in the first nine months; it should really be apportioned to the second accident.” Thank you!!
Thanks for clearing that up. I did not want to be incorrect with my sentence. I was think bear as the animal.