Pleater's recent post suggests another topic - and a pet peeve of mine: homonyms (words that sound the same when pronounced), near-homonyms, and their meanings.

Common examples for homonyms:
to, too and two; there, they're and their

to: the direction
too: also
two: the numerical amount

there: that place
they're: the contraction for 'they are'
their: the possessive (that is their house)

Another example that occurred in today's local newspaper: then and than. People here in the U.S. have gotten lazy in their pronunciation - creating near-homonyms like these - and thus wind up using the wrong word

than: a comparison (this is more/less than that)
then: a description of time (that was then, this is now)

[rant]
More and more frequently, I am seeing sentences along the lines of: 'this was more then just a coincidence'.

I'm occasionally guilty of a few myself (more often I have typos), so I try not to correct others in the online fora I frequent, but it irritates me when I run across them in periodicals that supposedly have editors and/or copywriters that are supposed to catch those sorts of things.

[/rant]