When you live and work in Oklahoma, a fair amount of the writing you do is bound to be about weather. After all, as the state’s own Will Rogers once famously said:
If you don’t like the weather in Oklahoma, wait a minute and it’ll change.”
Anyone who has lived here knows that weather can be big news in the Sooner state, so you can imagine how crazy it drove one of my editors that I consistently incorrectly spelled lightning.
Lightning is an electrical discharge from the sky. For example, Thunder and lightning often accompany rain in Oklahoma.
Lightening is when you make something lighter. For example, I’m thinking of lightening my hair for summer.
The words sound similar, but their meanings are quite different. Hopefully you can keep them straight from now on.
Now go forth and use words correctly!
stevejkfor Lol. Also not the same!
profkrg that’s just one of those ones I pass around when i see “lightening” when referring to “lightning”
profkrg Depends on whether you are going to experiment like Ben Franklin — or changing the shade of something.
profkrg this is in my top three spelling mistakes.
JenMaidenberg I used to drive an editor crazy with this.