More words that are easy to confuse

Stationery/ stationary

The noun stationery primarily refers to writing paper with matching envelopes. It can also be used to mean writing and other office materials. The word originates with a Latin term meaning a shopkeeper who sells products from a store, instead of walking around the streets to sell items. Often shopkeepers who were allowed to sell from fixed locations sold books and other items for university students and professors.

The adjective stationary refers to something that is not moving or cannot be moved. The word derives from a Latin term meaning staying in one place.

One way to remember the difference between these two similar words would be to tell ourselves that

The adjective stationary has two letter a’s.

Since the word adjective begins with the letter a, it should be easy to associate it in our memories with the adjective stationary. Once we recall that the word stationary is an adjective and not a noun, then we should use it correctly. If we mean to refer to the noun stationery to describe writing papers and similar materials, then we would not want to use an adjective.

Another phrase to remember might be:

The first year TU student Kwangjai bought some very pretty stationery to write to her friends Lamai, Malivalaya, and Pakpao.

If we consider that the words very and stationery end with the letters ery, this should help us to think of how the word stationery should be spelled when we mean to refer to writing paper or related products.

Some usage examples:

• Stationery with style. Until November 16, Betrend livens up offices everywhere with a selection of colourful stationery, decorative items and IT gadgets under the concept “make it fun”. The goodies are spread out over three themes. The “work & play zone” offers innovative accessories in shades of red, green, orange, yellow and blue; “natural born artist” has trendy gadgets and office supplies in pastel shades while “fun rider zone” goes for a smarter and more sober look with black and white items. You’ll find phone clocks, post-it note dispensers, passport and card holders, camera cases, corrective tape, iPhone cases, head phones, notebook cases, cameras, photo frames, games, backpacks, paper clips, radios, pens, colour pencils and ukulele. All the products are available at Betrend in The Mall, Emporium and Siam Paragon.
• The always-popular Metropolitan Museum of Art Store is celebrating the festive season with a series of gift collections that combine home decor items with stationery in a beautiful box set. They include the Bt7,010 Van Gogh Irish Flower Collection, which contains a pottery mug, note card box and a ball-point pen, the William Morris Pink & Rose Collection featuring a porcelain pitcher together with a mug for Bt6,870, and the Sunflower Monet Collection comprising a mug, note cards, pop-up note cards and pen.
• Parents and their kids were out shopping on Monday for school uniforms and stationery ahead of the new term beginning next week, with shops across the country offering discounts on the gear and on embroidering students’ and school names on shirts.
• “I aim to make OfficeMate an international brand and set up branches in the region,” Worawoot Ounjai, chief executive officer of COL and president of Thai Retailers Association, enthuses. As a teenager, he loved reading books on politics and socialism by authors such as Sulak Sivaraksa, so the obvious choice was studying Political Science in Thammasat University. “However, I couldn’t get into Thammasat because my entrance exam score was one point short. So I ended up studying Marketing in Kasetsart University, which was the turning point of my life,” Worawoot says. His first step into the world of business was taken while he was in his second year in university. At that time, his father’s wholesale stationery products business was doing badly, so Worawoot thought he should apply the marketing tips he was being taught in university. “Just as I was about to switch to Political Science, my father’s stationery business ran into serious financial problems. So, I decided to focus on marketing and apply that knowledge to help my family. The first thing I did was change the business model from middleman to direct seller. We began to start approaching offices and factories directly, which marked the beginning of OfficeMate,” Worawoot explains.
• B2S, a leading Thai stationery chain and member of the Central Group, has opened its first outlet in Vietnam, with the launch of its store in Ho Chi Minh City’s Thu Duc District.
• GrabExpress, an on-demand parcel delivery and messenger service on the Grab application, is now inviting users to donate stationery, toys, sports equipment, clothes and books to underprivileged children at the Baan Nokkamin Foundation in Bangkok and charitable organisations in six other provinces via GrabExpress (Bike).
• Leading office stationery and equipment supplier COL Public Co Ltd aims to set up 1,000 OfficeMate franchise units in the next five years.
• A fire caused Bt10 million in damage to a shop selling stationery and student uniforms in Udon Thani late Tuesday night.
• Unlock them with an app, drop them off anywhere, and nip past lanes of stationary car traffic: the humble bicycle is seeing a revival in China as a new generation of start-ups help tackle urban congestion and pollution with fleets of brightly coloured two wheelers. The bike-share concept has attracted huge venture capital as fledgling firms wrestle for market share. Such has been the success of this made-in-China business model, which is using smart phones to reignite the nation’s passion for cycling, companies are hatching plans to export the idea worldwide.
• Clip of train caught in notorious Bangkok traffic goes viral. As graphic evidence of Bangkok’s notorious traffic congestion, a Facebook user shot a clip of a train having to wait at a rail crossing on Tuesday afternoon and the clip went viral. The clip was shot and posted on Tuesday evening by a Facebook user Takawit Thibthong. By afternoon Wednesday, the clip had been viewed over 1.9 million times, was shared more than 30,000 times, and received over 10,000 reactions. Takawat said the crossing is under the Airport Rail Link above Makkasan Road. The clip showed that one side of the road was filled with stationary vehicles, preventing the official from lowering barriers to block the railway for the train to pass through.
• Virgin Active builds on its success in Thailand by opening a state-of-the-art gym on Wireless Road. Virgin Active brought its first multi-programme boutique studio to Thailand last week, opening a new club on Wireless Road that focuses on making exercise more fun, extra engaging and exclusive for its members. The new club has 1,300 square metres of floor space across three levels and is spacious enough to house nine different workout zones including a Pilates Reformer studio complete with 12 Stott Reformer Beds, as well as a cutting-edge cycle studio decked out with 18 stationary bikes from the Stages SC3 series – the finest of indoor cycling bikes.
• Marine protections ordered for Samui to preserve ecosystem. Boats will not be allowed to drop anchor on coral and must instead lash their anchors to the stationary buoys that are available.

(All images courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)