Many words in the English language look and sound similar to others. Whether we are writing novels or scientific papers, we like to make our writing interesting by varying the words we use. We do need to be careful how we do this, though. Here are a couple of errors I spotted recently:
The adjective, consistent versus the verb, consist
When writing a scientific paper, we often say that a particular scientific result is consistent with those obtained by other researchers. This means that our result is in agreement with what other researchers have found.So . . . can we rephrase that and say that our results are consisting with those of Smith et al.?
Unfortunately, no; this does not make sense. The verb, 'consist' is nearly always followed by the preposition, 'of'. We use 'consist of' when we are talking about the component parts or ingredients in something. For example, 'The loaf of bread I made this morning consists of yeast, flour, sugar, oil, water and salt.'
'Consist' and 'consistent' may sound very similar, but they do not mean the same thing.
The adjectives, common and communal
I recently came across a reference to a communal, rather than a common plant. 'Communal' is, after all, very similar to the word 'common', so this was an understandable mistake. Although both words come from the same Latin root, they have different meanings in English. The adjective, communal, is used to describe things held in common or used by a lot of people at once (such as 'communal bins'), whereas the adjective, common, is used to describe something which is widely available or frequently seen.
When in doubt, it's best to check dictionary definitions. The good news is, many dictionaries are available free online, for example:
http://www.collinsdictionary.com and
http://www.oxforddictionaries.com
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