Years ago, I was working on one of the For Dummies books and wrote a sentence along the lines of Double-tap with two fingers on the touchpad to hone in on the section you want to see up close. My witty, wry, erudite editor, the late Dennis Cohen, left an unforgettable comment that I could “home in” or “hone” but could not “hone in.”
In the decade or so since then, I’ve corrected the use of home and hone—following the rule passed on to me—and frequently noted its (presumed) misuse. Just a week ago, I was taken aback when a writer I respect used “hone in” in a blog post. How could this be? It must have been a typo! I thought.
Before writing this today, however, I referred to the dictionary that came with my computer (New Oxford American) and read that hone in on has become an accepted equivalent to home in on, especially in North America. My shoulders slump when I see this kind of language fluidity. I can’t help but think the writer is lazy, imprecise. We have two fine verbs with distinct meanings that enable writers to communicate clearly:
home – to aim for a target or destination (think of a homing pigeon)
hone – sharpen, to make more acute (as in honing a blade)
Why do we need to confuse things by accepting a bastardization of the two?
I was somewhat heartened by an online search: a post on the Merriam-Webster site summarizes that while hone in is acceptable, home in is considered more correct. I’ll continue siding with Merriam-Webster, homing in on errors to help others hone their writing skills.
Check out the other Use the Right Word posts to read about some of my other editing peeves. In the meantime, tell me which evolutions in the English language bother you.
If you’d like to receive Use the Right Word, which is part of my weekly newsletter Words on Wednesday, you can sign up here.
Originally published March 22, 2023.