Put simply: one bleats and the other is published
When I’m wearing my private tutor’s hat, I always advise my pupils that if they hear a word they don’t know the meaning of three times within a week, it’s definitely time to look it up. My theory is that if they’ve heard a word that frequently, it could easily rise spectre-like from a Higher English close reading paper to haunt them.
Being a consistent soul, I feel duty-bound to extend my vocabulary rule of thumb to editing advice as well, and that’s what has prompted this quick “heads-up” post. The phrase I’ve seen used incorrectly three times in the past week is “a new edition to the family”, whereas what the writer almost certainly meant was “a new addition to the family” (i.e. a baby or a pet).
So I thought it might be helpful to clarify the difference between these two, albeit similar-sounding, words…
Addition (noun): The act or process of adding OR something that has been added to something else, e.g. The black lamb was a new ADDITION to our flock.
Not to be confused with…
Edition (noun): a specific form or version of a published text, e.g. I prefer the previous EDITION of this book.
