To be continued

September 17th, 2008 at 07:00am Barry Wood

To continue is to go on and on and on. But don’t write “continue on.” Save that “on” for a place where it’s needed.

As part of this continuing education, let’s also review the difference between “continual” and “continuous.”

The former is about repetition, “happening over and over again.” Legislatures are places of continual argument, but they do take breaks from it.

“Continuous” is “going on or extending without interruption or break; unbroken; connected.” When you’re at sea, the ocean appears to be continuous.

“Continuity” is the noun for “the state or quality of being continuous; connectedness; coherence.” It’s also a word used in the arts for a script for a film, radio or TV show, comic strip, etc. In movies, it also refers to matching how things appear from one shot to the next.

This family of words also contains “continuum,” a rare example of two “u’s” together. “Vacuum” is another.

Space is essentially a vacuum, but space-time is a continuum.

Entry Filed under: wordiness, perplexing pairs