Do You Hear it or Here it?

It’s surprising to me how often I receive a letter or advertisement in the mail with grammar or punctuation mistakes. I sometimes get a manuscript for editing with the same mistakes, so I guess I shouldn’t be too surprised. Not everybody who finds themselves writing some sort of missive managed to test out of Freshman English in college.

Having already tackled the subject of passive verbs, I decided to continue the trend by explaining a pair of homonyms. Homonyms are words that sound the same but have different meanings.

The two words I’m going to pick on today are here and hear. They sound the same, but they aren’t spelled the same and they can’t be used interchangeably.

Here means ‘this spot where I am,’ or ‘the area where I am’. It designates a location.

Hear is the act of perceiving sound by way of the ear. Sometimes a bass instrument or a really loud sound can be felt vibrating through your body, but that’s not hearing. If you truly can’t remember which is which, then notice and remember that the word that relies on ears has the word ‘ear’ in it.

I once received a manuscript that had the town crier shouting, “Here ye, here ye!” I tied my brain in knots trying to figure out if he was really instructing the townspeople to gather around him. It didn’t seem right to me, but maybe I was wrong. So I googled it, and found out that it was supposed to be “Hear ye, hear ye!” Which translates from Medieval English to “Listen you, listen you.” And of course, you can’t listen if you don’t have an ear, so the correct word to use is hear.

Memorize the meanings of these two words, and then substitute that meaning when you use one of them, to see if you used the correct one.

I will build a house here. = I will build a house in this spot. That makes sense.

I will build a house hear. = I will build a house by listening. That doesn’t make sense.

Did you here the doorbell? = Did you in this location the doorbell? No, that doesn’t make sense.

Did you hear the doorbell? = Did you perceive the doorbell? That does make sense.

I hope you enjoyed this mini-lesson. What was the worst use of either here or hear that you’ve noticed?