One definition of heart-wrenching is “injuring by violent twisting or straining.” However, the traditional idiom is heart-rending.
A chiasmus is a rhetorical device in which the order of the terms in the first of two parallel clauses is reversed in the second.
The near-homophones defuse and diffuse can give writers and editors some trouble.
Take care when choosing between elicit and solicit. Soliciting means asking for something; eliciting means actually getting it.
It’s a good idea to make sure you understand two very negative words that can easily be confused: insidious and invidious.
Because inveigh and inveigle are so similar, it’s easy to mistake one for the other.