Miss Hasler's English Class: 5

There are many words and expressions from other languages that we use in English. The two that we are going to look at today come from Latin and are typically used in the form of abbreviations. Does anyone know what an abbreviation is? Julie?

I doubt the answer is hiding in your pencil case, dear. Yes, that is a pretty pencil topper, but it isn’t quite what I was after. Yes, I suppose it does look a bit like Harry.

Abbreviations – watch the spelling on the board – are shortened versions of words or phrases. Sometimes they are shortened right down to the first letter of the word(s). Abbreviations are similar to contractions – words like don’t and isn’t – but they differ in that they don’t need apostrophes to be added to represent the letters we have taken out.

The abbreviations that we are concerned with today are e.g. and i.e. Notice the dots after each of the letters: these show that we have taken the endings off each of the words. It doesn’t matter that the words we are abbreviating are from Latin; we do the same thing with abbreviations of ‘ordinary’ English words like prof. (short for professor) and Rev. (short for Reverend).

An interesting side note: in American English, abbreviations almost always have dots put on the end (as in Doctor = Dr. or Mister = Mr.), but in British English dots are only used when the end of the word is cut off (as in Rev. = Reverend). Doctor is shortened to Dr, without a dot at the end, as the only bit of the word missing is the middle.

Now, back to e.g. and i.e. These are two often-used Latin expressions that are often used incorrectly by being mixed up. The key thing to remember is that they have distinct meanings and are not interchangeable.

e.g. is short for ‘exempli gratia’, which means ‘for example’. It should be used just as its English equivalent would be, to introduce an example (or a number of examples) of whatever it is you are writing about:

Many animal species (e.g. the red-backed frog) are endemic to South America.
There are lots of playground games that girls can play, e.g. skipping, hopscotch, tag.

i.e. is short for ‘id est’, which means ‘that is’ or ‘in other words’. Just like its English equivalent, it should be used to introduce an explanatory point:

The temperature at which the triple point of water can occur is 273.16 Kelvin, i.e., 0.01 degrees Celsius.
Bella likes to go extreme ironing, i.e., doing her ironing in unusual or dangerous situations.

A good way of testing whether you have used e.g. or i.e. correctly or not is to put the English equivalent in instead:

My satchel is carmine, e.g., red.
My satchel is carmine, for example, red.

Does this sound right? It does not! We should use i.e. here, not e.g.:

My satchel is carmine, i.e., red.
My satchel is carmine, that is, red.

Remembering which of e.g. or i.e. to use is made easier by the Latin word exempli and the English word example being so similar. For example = e.g.

A similar trick can be used to remember that i.e. means that is.

See? Good.

Homework
Write a sentence using e.g. and another using i.e.