1 Wrong word

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Prescience means “foresight,” and precedence means “priority.”

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Allegory is a spell checker’s replacement for a misspelling of allergy.

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Wrong-word errors can involve using a word with the wrong shade of meaning, using a word with a completely wrong meaning, or using a wrong preposition or another wrong word in an idiom. Selecting a word from a thesaurus without knowing its meaning, or allowing a spell checker to correct spelling automatically, can lead to wrong-word errors, so use these tools with care. If you have trouble with prepositions and idioms, memorize the standard usage. (See Chapter 23 on word choice and spelling and Chapter 60 on prepositions and idioms.)