Past/passed

'Past' is also used very frequently as a preposition: the nearest shop is just past the petrol station

Patients or patience, spelt or spelled.

I've never got to grips with when to use practise or practice, and licence or license. Been confused by these for many years.

Practise is the verb, and practice the noun. If you think of advise and advice, it's easier to remember. But the Americans use practice for both!

“Patients” and “patience” are just two entirely different words !

Luckygirl your GD shouldn't be confused by 'wrote' and 'boat'. She will learn in Year 1 about vowel digraphs-oe, oa etc. She will already know about consonant digraphs-th,ch, sh etc.
wrote is a split digraph like quote, tote. where a letter imposes itself between the two vowels. This is now taught instead of the 'magic e' Children love practical demonstrations when one child (the relevant consonant) splits two holding hands. That sounds bit complicated, but believe me she will understand it and explain it to you. More explanation www.spellingcity.com/digraphs.html

Don't worry, folks, Ernie Wise did OK with his 'play wot he wrote'.

DGD2 (6) insisted on very earnestly following my finger under the words at a service on Sunday, trying to fathom out words like 'doth', 'hsst' and 'thou'
I think she thought they were Welsh.

sorry - 'hast'!

'Brought' is the past of 'bring' and 'bought' is the past of 'buy'.

Lend and borrow

It confuses me that people can mix them up

Could someone please explain where "ought of" comes from? I have never seen or heard it! How do you use it?

Discreet and discrete ......... waaah

"of" instead of "have" seems to be an increasing error.
e.g 'Should of' for 'Should have'
'Ought of' for 'Ought to have'

Harder to discern in speech(should've) but easy to spot when written!

Thanks PECS. I've seen (on GN) and heard 'could of' and 'should of' and 'might of' but it's quite a stretch to get 'ought to have' down to 'ought of'. I really have never seen it in written form and don't think I've heard it either!

mcem There is an old expression saying that you know 'nought of'.......what's happened etc which I still hear elderly local people use occasionally. Naught is the old way of saying 'nothing'

A useful grammar rule is use c if it’s a noun (thing) and s if it’s a verb (action) eg prophecy = a thing & propesy is something prophets do. Hope this helps, I was an English teacher in a former life.

Slightly different but what really gets me is how many people don’t know the difference between ‘there’ (a place): and their ( belonging to someone).
So many tricky words in the English language.

But 'nought of' has nothing to do with 'ought of' has it? That's surely quite a different context.
I think the best explanation is that it's an abbreviated and ungrammatical form of 'ought to have' as PECS suggested.

I am part of a FB group for curly haired women and the lack of English astonishes me! People write that they ‘loose’ a lot of hair in the shower. They ‘defuse’ their hair. They sometimes put ‘moose’ or ‘mouse’ in their hair. And those are just the regular miss-spellings, there are plenty more to put my teeth on edge! I’ve realised one thing I hate about social media is that we get to see how bad people’s English is. And you can’t blame it on lack of education- some of the people I was at school with are the worst offenders!

Chicklette I'm curious. Are you really on a FB group for curly haired women or is that just a cute way of referring to ladies with perms? My mother used to say she was off to her afternoon with the "blue rinse brigade" which amused me.

NanKate I have heard/seen so many people use sat (as in "I was sat next to...") that I occasionally wonder if I am correct when using seated/sitting.
My rule of thumb nowadays is that if it puts my teeth on edge it's wrong.

Esspee it really is for curly hair! It’s called Curly Girls conditioner washing group for women. It’s about making your curls as healthy and beautiful as possible ? And also accepting and loving your curls. A fabulous group, but some of them need an English class ? That’s unkind of me, but I was brought up to always spell properly etc so I’m a bit of a grammar nazi I’m afraid. Not that I’d ever say anything, I just seethe inwardly!

Practice and practise are the ones I always get confused.

Conni7
Thank you for providing an easy way for me to remember which to use - practice or practise: Doctor has a 'c' in it and so does his 'practi_c_e'. Voila!

My primary school teacher told us (possibly incorrectly) that the verb "practise" used to be pronounced like "advise", whereas "practice" is a noun like "advice". This certainly worked for me and I never confused them after that.