Kenneth G. Wilson (1923–). The Columbia Guide to Standard American English. 1993.
accept, except (vv.)
Because these verbs are often homophones, they are sometimes inadvertently written or printed for each other, but confusion in speech is unlikely and usually undetectable: accept means “to grant, to receive, to submit to, to answer yes, to agree to be a member or to take a position” and has several other specialized senses: Oberlin accepted her as a transfer student. Except as a verb means “to take out, to leave out, to take exception to”: I except from my anger anyone who has already paid. (Except is also a conjunction, usually followed by that, and a preposition, but it seems not to pose any particular usage problems in these functions.)
