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Such is the definition of homophone according to my dictionaries and the trouble people have with homophones has been exacerbated in recent times by two factors. The first is sloppy pronunciation: the second is increased reliance on the spellchecker feature of word processing programs.

Only sloppy pronunciation could cause confusion between foreword and forward, but I have reviewed several books in my work at The Pitstop Bookshop in which the foreword was wrongly labelled as the forward. How that got through the publisher's editing process is anyone's guess.

Another confusion that turned up in an editing job I did recently was between sort and sought. The result was a number of items being described as sort after when the writer intended sought after.

Generations of comedians have relied on the similar sounds of words for their puns and double entendres, which is one of the benefits, however dubious, of the existence of homophones. Puns have been around in English and other languages for a long time and I have read that punsters were highly thought of among Cetewayo's Zulus.

Incidentally, read is another word that causes confusion. Read, when it is the past tense or past participle of the verb to read is pronounced the same way as red. Lead and led are also confused. Oddly enough, led is the past tense or past participle of the verb to lead. It's a funny language.

Homophonic names can be a burden to their unfortunate owners. Think of the number of surnames that should never be partnered with the given name Richard, or more particularly with its diminutive, Dick. I remember my surprise when a speaker at a function I attended some years ago was introduced as Dick Standing.

A more famous Dick was NASCAR driver Dick Trickle. In a race report about 12 years ago in the Australian motor sports newspaper Auto Action, Dick received an unfortunate mention. Another driver, Brett Bodine, had raced with a broken hand, received in an accident a week earlier, in which Bodine also received a mild concussion. As a result, to achieve fifth place in the race, Auto Action told us: "Bodine needed late-race relief help from Dick Trickle to finish".

Sticking with motor racing for the moment, race commentators frequently fall foul of a near homophone and tell us that a racer is honing in on another competitor. I have also heard a speaker at a business function say that a company was honing in on a solution to a problem.

In each case, the correct term is homing in, just as a homing pigeon homes in on its coop. To hone is to sharpen with a whetstone, or to make sharper or more focussed. You can hone your knife or your skills, but you cannot hone in on anyone or anything.

This confusion between hone and home might be merely a malapropism, the mistaken use of a similar sounding word. This is often because the person misusing the word thinks its use makes him or her sound more educated. The spirit of Mrs Malaprop lives.