Accept / Except

Today, at 3:30 am, whilst chatting with an acquaintance of mine, he made a mistake and I ignored it; upon reflection, I'd now like to weep.
The message was as follows:
"i wanna go to the party accept i gotta babysit my brother"
Emotionally, this rips apart my insides. Though, the inverse mistake is just as bad, the following was a different conversation, 15 minutes later:
"I was excepted to the English program at York"
This is NO joke, someone was "excepted" (read: accepted) to work toward her MA in English.

Accept and Except are very different words. They share no relation, and thus, unlike my upcoming entry, should never be confused. (You'll have to check back in a few days to find out.)

Accept = To acquiesce, to give an affirmative answer, to consent, to be given permission, to believe, etc.
Except =  To exclude, to omit, but, etc.

A quick way to remember the difference is to use the letter "X". One uses "X", as in "eXcept", to cross out an item.

To fix the above examples: (Taking some grammarian liberties.)
"I want to go to the party, except I must babysit my brother."
and
"I was thrown out of the English MA program at York."
Just kidding…
"I was accepted to the English program at York"

On top of it all, accept that except, should never end a sentence.
(…except in rare situations… Except is a typically a preposition; it can also be a conjunction and archaically it is a verb. However, "except" still should never end a sentence.)