In keeping with the original spirit of this series, I bring you the term “apart”. This is a great word, but typists have allowed themselves to become lazy in its use. Time and again, the speaker/writer forgets to proofread and ends up saying something they hadn’t intended at all.

The most common misstep with this term is when people are invited to participate in some activity or event: “Come, be a part of our reading group.”

When we leave the space out our invitation actually asks people to separate themselves from the group: “. . . be apart of our group.”

The difference the space makes says so much. Apart means to separate or pull one side away from another: “Joe and Sue have been apart for far too long.” Or “Do you like to eat pull-apart bread.”

When you desire to say that someone or something is participating, you should use the two word phrase “a part”: “Joe was a part of the cooking class at Sue’s house.”

Granted this use advocating participation sounds rather colloquial when we leave out the adjectives (“he was a vital part”), but then that would keep us from misusing the term apart altogether, now wouldn’t it?