Reviewing our writing for errors with homographs, homophones, and homonyms is helpful since our inattention to them is the cause of many miscues.
Homographs are words that look the same but have different meanings. Knowing that a sewer is a drain as well as a person who sews will prevent you from writing sower, a person who plants, when you mean sewer.
Homophones are words that sound the same but can be spelled differently and have different meanings, such as affect, a verb meaning to influence, and effect, a noun meaning result. My trick to remembering these two is recall the a in affect because it is an action, while the e in effect is the end, or result.
Homonyms are words that have the same spelling but different meanings, such as lie, the verb meaning to recline, and lie, the verb meaning to tell a falsehood. Not knowing the difference has made most people write, "Let's lay in the grass" when they mean "Let's lie in the grass."
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