This week’s Czenglish mistake concerns a simple misuse of preposition. When you say exactly what someone else says, we can use the Latin word ‘verbatim’ or we can say ‘word for word’. We do not say word ‘by’ word. In English, this is wrong.
So, in the above example, correct is to say – „I’m telling you what my boss said word for word.“
There is another similar phrase – by heart – but this has a slightly different meaning. By heart means that you know all the words without having to read/check the information. So you might know something, like a song or poem, by heart. If you are quoting what someone says with the exact words, however, you would say it word for word.
