Is it soar or sore? Led or lead? If you’ve ever doubted your spelling or mixed up two words, Homophones, Weakly is for you. For five years, illustrator Bruce Worden made it his mission to ensure that you’d never get your homophones confused again. In case you don’t remember, homophones are two or more words having the same pronunciation, but different spelling and meaning.
Through clever, black and white illustrations, Worden makes it a bit easier to remember that gorilla and guerilla are two very different words. From 2011 to 2016, Worden posted new homophones each week, and now he updates his project occasionally. “I was inspired to do it because I felt like, as spell-check software became more and more reliable, I was seeing a surprising amount of homophone typos slipping through professionally edited content—presumably because the software still recognized them as real words and there weren’t enough human eyes on the job,” Worden tells My Modern Met. “I just wanted to do something to be ‘part of the solution’ instead of shaking my fist at the air.”
What seems like child’s play at first is quite interesting for lovers of the English language, as one discovers just how many homophones exist. Worden hopes his illustrations will make people chuckle, while also helping them remember spelling they may have a hard time with. He recently published a Homophones, Weakly book with 150 of the best illustrations from the blog. Catch the limited edition on Gumroad while you can.
For 5 years, illustrator Bruce Worden created clever, simple visuals to help people remember their homophones.
Homophones are a set of two or more words having the same pronunciation, but different spelling and meaning.
A homophone is a type of homonym—words that sound alike but have different meanings.
Homophones, Weakly: Website | Facebook | Gumroad
My Modern Met granted permission to use photos by Bruce Worden.
Related Articles:
Comic Artist Maps the History of Languages with an Illustrated Linguistic Tree
Illustrated Infographic Shows 63 Differences Between American and British English
Stunning Sculpture Projects Poems in Different Languages
Designer Spends a Year Creating Logos That Subtly Reveal the Meaning of Words