There are some words in English that resemble other words simply too much. The difference in meaning is usually not proportional to the small difference in the form. One or two letters can make or break a sentence. For example, speaking of an 'economic car' would not make too much sense, whereas an 'economical car' actually means something: a car which is cheap to operate and maintain. Word pairs such as lie-lay , beside-besides , affect-effect or desert-dessert should be familiar to all foreign learners of English above intermediate level. But there are other traps similar to these. In fact, there are lots and lots of words in English that can be confused, and some of them are occasionally mixed up even by native speakers. There is a very handy site, where you can spend some time on improving or testing your knowledge about these words. The thing that I especially like about this site is that the verbs are tested in all (or at least several) of their various forms.
And if you are still here you surely deserve this nice dessert:
(picture from here)
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