Garner’s Usage Tip of the Day: Miscellaneous Entries.

Miscellaneous Entries. shareholder; stockholder; *shareowner. All three terms refer to one who owns stock in a corporation. The first is the most common, the second a fairly common equivalent, and the third so much less frequent that it has become a needless variant. shavable. So spelled — not “shaveable.” shave / shaved / shaved. “Shaven” exists only as a past-participial adjective {clean-shaven face}. sheaves, n., is the plural both of “sheaf” (= a bundle) and of “sheave” (= a pulley). shed / shed / shed. Avoid the erroneous *”shedded” — e.g.: “Prosecutors plainly want to suggest that the missing bags contained both the knife they believe Mr. Simpson used to murder Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald L. Goldman, and blood-soaked clothes he quickly shedded [read ‘shed’] before boarding his flight to Chicago.” David Margolick, “Five Bags or Three Bags? Simpson Prosecutor Asks,” N.Y. Times, 30 May 1995, at A14. Language-Change Index — *”shedded” for “shed” as past tense of “shed”: Stage 2. sheik (= [1] an Arab chieftain; or [2] a Muslim official) is the standard spelling. *”Sheikh” is a variant. The word is pronounced /sheek/ or /shayk/. *Invariably inferior forms. ——————– Quotation of the Day: “Of all the needs a book has, the chief need is that it be readable.” Anthony Trollope, “Trollope on the Literary Life,” in Best Advice on How to Write 6, 33 (Gorham Munson ed., 1952).