Which of these words refers to commercially manufactured writing materials?

Stationary vs. stationery

These two words have completely different meanings: “Stationary” means not moving, whereas “stationery” refers to office supplies like pencils, erasers, paper, and envelopes.

There is a simple way to remember which one’s which. Take –ERY, the last part of “stationery”, as your clue: Now remember that the “e” is for erasers and envelopes – two very common pieces of stationery!

A stationer is a person or shop selling paper, pens, and other writing and office materials.

The adjective 'static' means 'lacking in movement, action, or change, especially in an undesirable or uninteresting way.'

More Info: www.ef.com

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What are your thoughts on this subject?

20 Comments

Michele Barnett

I loved the Stationery store in my home town as I was growing up. I loved writing letters on pretty stationery and sealing the envelopes with wax. That's also where I found supplies for my scrapbooks (most of which I still have, 6 decades later!

Lorna Shipton

I always remember it using the 'e' for envelope as opposed to 'a' for action

Howard Groopman

Mom taught me at an early age that stationERy with an ER is papER.

earlepg

Player, Maybe then it just "paper"?

earlepg

John W Shreve, I've seen plenty of paperwork from that era (and beyond) that put that to good effect. Even people's names could be spelled several different ways on the same page.

Player

What if it's not commercially manufactured?

james parrillo

John Mason, I remember it by stationary is in one place. Stationery is letters. Thank you, Christine, James's wife

Lawanta

Heather Phillips, and eraser, as in the explanation.

John W Shreve

Pat Harmer, Take heart, Pat. Andrew Jackson said, "It's a darned poor mind that can think of only one way to spell a word."

ninakamwene

Thank you for giving us clues, I tend to miss this one. I like beautiful stationery, however; I do not like to be stationary. Practice makes perfection. Cool