Here's another roundup of common mistakes in word choice or grammar. These are all examples I've read recently:
"Quick to setup." That should be "Quick to set up". Setup is a noun referring to the process, so you might say "The setup is quick."
"Five things you should do everyday." That should be, "Five things you should do every day." Everyday means common or ordinary.
"Back in its hay days..." That should be its heyday (singular).
"Unless you want to give your boss free reign on your Facebook account..." I can see why this one is confusing. Giving somebody the power to reign over you like a king makes sense; actually, the term comes from riding, in which free rein is a rein held loosely to give the horse free motion. However, the use of "free reign" is so widespread that many experts consider this a lost battle.
".. people would just as sooner use..." This is a combination of two terms, just as soon and sooner. For instance, "People would just as soon throw something away as have it repaired," meaning there's no difference in which option is preferred, and "People would sooner throw something away than have it repaired," in which case the option of throwing the thing away is preferred.
"to raise moral..." This could just have been a typo for morale. I'm very sympathetic toward people who have typos in their articles mainly because I know I have quite a few in mine. On the other hand it might have been someone who hadn't seen the word in print and sounded it out, like the person who wrote the word "Wallah!" for voilà, which is also easy to mix up with viola, the musical instrument (I've been guilty of that one).
And last but not least, a sentence in Dan Brown's novel, Inferno, reads, "Apparently having received all the information the man intended to share, Sienna changed tacks." Unless she was using one set of small nails and switched to using a different set, she should have changed tack (from a sailing term). The other mix-up with this one is confusing it with tact, which is a form of politeness.
All mistakes to avoid this year!
