1. Commonly Confused Words 8 th Grade

2. capitol/capitol capitol  Capital refers to a city, or it can refer to wealth or resources. capital  Capitol refers to a building where lawmakers meet The capitol has undergone extensive renovations. The residents of the state capital protested the development plans.

3. cell/sale/sell cell  Cell refers to a small room, organism, or space in an document on a computer sell  Sell is to exchange for money or some other form of exchange sale  Sale is either offering something for purchase (“for sale”) or offering it at a special price (“on sale”) I tried to sell the cell phone at the yard sale.

4. choose/chose choose  Choose is a verb that means to make a choice chose  Chose is the past tense of to choose He chose the first option because he knew he had to choose soon.

5. emigrate/immigrate emigrate  Emigrate means to leave one country or region to settle in another.  In 1900, my grandfather emigrated from Russia. immigrate  Immigrate means to enter another country and reside there.  Many Mexicans immigrate to the U.S. to find work.

6. farther/further farther  Farther is used for physical distance further  Further is used for non-physical The farther we walked the more hostile the terrain became. I promised to give the plan further thought.

7. new/knew new  New is the opposite of old knew  Knew is the past tense of know I knew my sneakers weren’t new, but I loved them anyway because they were so comfortable.

8. loose/lose loose  Loose means slack or free lose  Lose means mislaying or dropping something and not being able to find it. Or it means the opposite of “to win.” My pockets are loose, so I am likely to lose my money.

9. passed/past passed  Passed is the past tense of pass, which means “to go by or across” past  Past means a time that has gone Time passed and we forgot all of our past problems.

10. quiet/quit/quite quiet  Quiet means without noise quite  Quit means to stop doing something that you once did quit  Quite when used in fiction means moderately, but can mean totally or entirely Quit talking and be quiet because you’re not quite hearing what I’m trying to tell you.

11. there/their/they’re there  There is a location they’re  There is the possessive of they. their  They’re is short for they are. They hung their coats over there by the door where they’re unlikely to miss seeing them on their way out.”

12. weak/week weak  Weak is the opposite of strong week  Week is seven days, Sunday to Saturday I worked out all week, so I wasn’t as weak as before.