Have you spotted anything wrong in today issue of My Paper featured above?
The error is on the confusion of the words “Biannual” and “Biennial”.
In this news article, it stated that “The biannual Asian Aerospace was organized by Reed Exhibitions and …” At the end of the article, the writer stated: “I hope this venue won’t come alive just once in two years.”
We are so used to biweekly as every two weeks and bimonthly as every two months. We extrapolate that bi-annual should also mean every two years. However, this assumption is totally wrong. Biannual means twice every year! The correct word to use is BIENNIAL.
English is not my first language. I have spent most of my 3 years of Polytechnic education in the library with the company of a thick dictionary to check for words that are foreign to me. My pre-Polytechnic education is fully Chinese!
I do not expect our English journalist could make this mistake and the editor could not catch this mistake.
It is truly disappointed that our English standard is so low.
By the way, bimonthly could also mean twice a month according to Macmillan English Dictionary.
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