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I saw this text on a website today, and had to rub my eyes to make sure I was awake:
What was written:
ware and tare – both words are incorrect for the meaning of this phrase above.
If we write, “Items have a small amount of ware and tare.” using the spelling above, the sentence will mean, “Items have a small amount of goods and weight.” — whereas the author actually/probably meant, “Items have a small amount of damage and have not been worn down much.”
What should have been written? These words sound the SAME but have different spelling than the first example:
wear and tear – this spelling is correct!
In this instance, “Wear” refers to how much an item has been used or worn.
In this instance, “Tear” refers to how much an item has been used and may have damage due to its use.
TIP — there are two meanings for the word “tear” and two different ways to pronounce the same word:
- in this example above, “tear” means to tear a piece of paper or other item, meaning “rip” — in this case, the word is pronounced the same as “hair”.
- the second way to use “tear” is when we want to cry and a tear may roll down our cheek because we are sad — in this case, the word is pronounced the same as “ear”.
Does this help? Please do let me know.
Have you seen anything similar to this? I’d love to hear from you if you have :-)
