The Language Perfectionist: Tortuous, Torturous, Tortious

Recently, I read an article in The New York Times about a law firm that sent a warning letter to the media about its client, an overexposed Hollywood celebrity. The report quoted the firm’s accusation of "tortuous impersonation."

Shouldn’t the education of highly paid lawyers include spelling lessons? The word these attorneys wanted is tortious.

Coincidentally, on the same day, a brief item appeared in The Wall Street Journal, adapted from its online law blog. The chairman of a huge law firm cautioned his young employees not to submit documents that contain typos or grammatical mistakes.

Here are some helpful definitions:

• The word tortuous means winding, twisting, or convoluted, like a road.

• The word torturous means causing pain or suffering.

• The word tortious (pronounced "TOR-shuss") means relating to a civil wrong - that is, a tort.

How confounding is all this? My Microsoft Word Auto-Correct function just "corrected" tortious to tortuous.

[Ed Note: For more than three decades, Don Hauptman was an award-winning independent direct-response copywriter and creative consultant. He is author of The Versatile Freelancer, an e-book forthcoming from AWAI that shows writers and other creative professionals how to diversify their careers into critiquing, consulting, training, and speaking.]

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