Friday, May 7, 2010

Incident/Incidence


The first highlighted word, incidences, is wrong; make it incidents (Straits Times, 27 April 2010). 

An incidence is ‘the extent to which something happens or has an effect, e.g. an area with a high incidence of crime’ (Oxford Advanced Learner’s). 

By contrast, an incident is ‘something that happens, usually something unusual or unpleasant, e.g. His bad behaviour was just an isolated incident’.

No comments:

Post a Comment

Recent Comments