Remember playing Charades as a kid? Acting out a film or book title to the merciless heckling of your siblings?

Well that’s how I remember it anyway.

There was one rule of the game that I always found particularly useful. The one that allows you to tug on your ear, making everyone shout ‘sounds like’, then act out a rhyming word.

Well sometimes it seems like everyone is utilising the ‘sounds like’ rule in their writing. And it’s not just self-published e-book authors (and I use that term extremely loosely) who are guilty of this, although they are the worst offenders, but online journos too.

Here are three I’ve seen a lot of recently:

1. Your nerves are stretched TAUT not TAUGHT, which is that thing they did to you at school.

2. A zombie has a shambling GAIT not GATE, which is that thing that lets you through a fence.

3. Lots of people is a HORDE not HOARD, which is that thing your mum does with useless crap.

These zombies don’t have a shambling gait.