When to Use Pour and Pore
President Trump took to his Twitter account to tweet a defense of his intentional capitalization of common nouns. As reported by Politico, President Trump tweeted, “After having written many best selling books, and somewhat priding myself on my ability to write, it should be noted that the Fake News constantly likes to pour over my tweets looking for a mistake. I capitalize certain words only for emphasis, not b/c they should be capitalized!”
Poor Spelling
It seems that a number of recent articles analyzing his arbitrary capitalization may have penetrated the president’s notoriously thin skin, such as the May 28 Chicago Tribune article by Alan Levinovitz.
However, grammarians largely ignored Trump’s defense of his capitalization “for emphasis” and focused on two other errors.
Tweeters pointed out that President Trump should have tweeted, “pore over,” which means 1. “to read or study with steady attention or application; 2. to gaze earnestly or steadily; or 3. to meditate or ponder intently (usually followed by over, on, or upon), rather than his use of “pour over,” which means to “to send (a liquid, fluid, or anything in loose particles) flowing or falling, as from one container to another, or into, over, or on something” (dictionary.com).
Additionally, English teachers chimed in about the misspelling of the compound word, bestselling. President Trump tweeted “best selling,” instead. President Trump frequently misuses hyphens, as in his takedown (not take-down) of Meryl Streep’s comments at the 2017 Golden Globes. President Trump tweeted, “over-rated,” instead of the correct overrated to describe Streeps’ acting skills.
Additional tweets continue to pour in, including 3 tweets from “Harry Potter” author and frequent Trump-critic, J.K. Rowling. According to Time, Rowling tweeted, “ha” 501 times in 3 successive tweets, commenting in one of them that “someone told him how to spell ‘pore.’” In another tweet, the author sarcastically referred to President Trump as the “Gratest Writer on earth,”
An hour later, the pour had been corrected to pore; however, the compound word, bestselling, remained as best selling.
Interesting to note: Microsoft Word’s spell checker highlights the error, best selling, but the program’s grammar and usage checker does not suggest a correction for the misuse of the word pour.
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