Do you use made-up words?

It's easy to slip into using "words" that aren't really words. Use one of these with someone who knows better and your reputation slips a bit. Eliminating non-words will give an edge to your writing. Here's a list compiled by Mark Nichol:

1. Administrate: A back-formation of administration and an unnecessary extension of administer

2. Commentate: A back-formation of commentator and an unnecessary extension of comment

3. Dimunition: Erroneous; the correct form is diminution (think of diminutive)

4. Exploitive: A younger, acceptable variant of exploitative

5. Firstly: As with secondly and thirdly, erroneous when enumerating points; use first and so on

6. Heighth: Rarely appears in print, but a frequent error in spoken discourse (Why isn't heightmodeled on the form of depth, length, and width? Because it doesn't shift in spelling and pronunciation from its associated term, tall, like the others, which are derived from deep, long, andwide, do. Neither do we say or write weighth.)

7. Irregardless: An unnecessary extension of regardless on the analogy of irrespective but ignoring that regardless, though it is not an antonym of regard, already has an antonymic affix

8. Miniscule: A common variant of minuscule, but widely considered erroneous

9. Orientate: A back-formation of orientation and an unnecessary extension of orient

10. Participator: Erroneous; the correct form is participant

11. Preventative: A common and acceptable variant of preventive

12. Societal: A variant of social with a distinct connotation (for example, "social occasion," but "societal trends")

13. Supposably: An erroneous variant of supposedly

14. 'Til: Also rendered til and till, an clipped form of until that is correct but informal English; use the full word except in colloquial usage

15. Undoubtably: An erroneous variant of undoubtedly

What's funny is that the spell checker on my blogging software didn't catch half of these.