Words frequently misspelled-CSEET

According to the Oxford Dictionary, spelling is hard and misspellings are not only common, but also awkward in professional contexts.

When you receive an email or document with spelling errors, it is difficult to trust the person sending it. Correct spelling used in written communication shows the attention as well as level of education of the person sending it.

There are a lot of tricky spelling rules in the English language. Following is a list of some of the most commonly misspelled words.

Some examples:

Correct word	Commonly misspelt as
absence	abcense, absance
accommodate	accomodate
achieve	acheive
calendar	calender
liaison	liason
receipt	reciept
tomorrow	tommorow, tomorow

Spellings and Pronounciation

English is an infamously difficult language to spell and pronounce. Students are often bewildered by the seemingly anarchic sound/spelling system of English. There often seem to be more exceptions than the rules, and the mastery of accurate spelling and pronunciation appears a daunting and demotivating task.

Though there is a relationship between a sound and the way it is expressed in writing, the same sound is often conveyed through different spellings.

For example

The sound in the middle of words ‘steep’ and ‘breach’ is the same and phonetically shown as [i] in the dictionary.

The letter ‘a’ may be pronounced in several different ways. In words like brag, flap, grab, have, etc, the sound is phonetically shown as [ae], in barge, false, half, ask, etc. as [a:], in words may, tray, stay, way, etc. as [ei], and in call, flaw, raw, talk, etc. as [o:].

Good dictionaries also have a phonetic chart, which helps to learn the correct pronunciation of different words.

Specialized dictionaries of pronunciation are also available for consultation.

Spelling Errors

Adequate care should be taken to spell words correctly in all communications so that you are able to communicate effectively and impressively.

Spelling errors are common when :

(i) certain alphabets/letters are repeated in a word. For example, tomorrow, occasion, beginning, profession, etc.

(ii) one has to sometimes choose between ‘ei’ and ‘ie’. For example, receive and believe. It is interesting to note that we always use ‘ei’ after ‘c’ (conceive, deceive, perceive, etc.) and ‘ie’ in the rest (achieve, chief, convenience, etc.)

(iii) ‘e’ can be either dropped or retained when changing the root word. For example, true changes into truly but sincere changes into sincerely.

(iv) an extra letter at times alters the meaning of the word. For example, lose and loose.

(v) when noun and verb forms of the same word have different spellings. For example, advice/ advise or practice/practise.

(vi) words have the same pronunciation but different spellings. For example, whether/weather, brake/break, there/their.

(vii) when a choice has to be made between ise(merchandise, enterprise, franchise, etc.) and ‘ize’ (size, prize, etc.). Some words are spelt differently by the Britishers and Americans, the latter prefer ‘z’ over ‘s’,

e.g. criticise/criticize, realise/realize, recognise/recognize, etc. Though both the spellings are acceptable, one should stick to either ‘s’ or ‘z’ for the sake of consistency.

(viii) when a word similarly spelt has two variants with different meanings in past and past participle forms. For example:

Lie-lied-lied

Lie-lay-laid.

Stress and Rhythm

A syllable is the minimum rhythmic sound of a spoken language. A word may have one or more syllables. For example, there is only one syllable in fame, name, claim, train, etc., two in address, confess, redress, transgress, and three in credentials, sacrifice, tarpaulin, etc., four in retribution, satisfaction, transatlantic and even five in words like conglomeration.

Good to know!!!

Dictionaries generally show the main stress marks by putting the symbol /’/ above and before the stressed syllable e.g. re’port. It is also important to know that the same word when used as a noun, is stressed differently e.g. ‘re port. Only one syllable in a word carries the main stress; other syllables are unstressed.

In order to achieve good and clear speech, we must learn to recognize the stressed syllable in a word.

Because many words can be extended with prefixes (such as “un-” or “anti-” or “re-“) or suffixes (such as “-ly” or “-ing” or “-ness”), a comprehensive list of words prone to misspelling would contain thousands of variations from combining prefixes or suffixes (or both) added to the root words. To limit the scope to common words, the top 350 words are considered (according to various sources).

The following list, of about 350 words, is based on documented lists of the top 100, 200, or 400 most commonly misspelled words in all variants of the English language, rather than listing every conceivable misspelled word. Each word is followed by examples of misspellings:

A–B

absence – abcense, absance
acceptable – acceptible
accidentally/accidently – accidentaly
accommodate – accomodate, acommodate
achieve – acheive
acknowledge – acknowlege, aknowledge
acquaintance – acquaintence, aquaintance
acquire – aquire, adquire
acquit – aquit
acreage – acrage, acerage
address – adress
adultery – adultary
advisable – adviseable, advizable
affect – effect aggression – agression
aggressive – agressive
allegiance – allegaince, allegience, alegiance
almost – allmost
a lot – alot (must be two words), allot
amateur – amatuer, amature
annually – anually, annualy
apparent – apparant, aparent
arctic – artic
argument – arguement
atheist – athiest, athist
awful – awfull, aweful
because – becuase
beautiful – beatuful
becoming – becomeing
beginning – begining
believe – beleive
bellwether – bellweather
buoy/buoyant – bouy/bouyant
business – buisness

C–D

calendar – calender
camouflage – camoflage, camoflague
capitol – capital(both words exist, but are distinct)
Caribbean – Carribean
category – catagory
caught – cauhgt, caugt
cemetery – cemetary, cematery
changeable – changable
chief – chei
colleague – collaegue, collegue
column – colum
coming – comming
committed – commited, comitted
comparison – comparsion
concede – conceed
congratulate – congradulate
conscientious – consciencious
conscious – concious, consious
consensus – concensus
controversy – contraversy
coolly – cooly
daiquiri – dacquiri, daquiri
deceive – decieve
definite – definate, definit
definitely – definitly, definately defiantly
desperate – desparate
difference – diffrence
dilemma – dilema
disappoint – dissapoint
disastrous – disasterous
drunkenness – drunkeness
dumbbell – dumbell

E–H

embarrass – embarass
equipment – equiptment (wrong in numerous webpages)
exceed – excede
exhilarate – exilerate
existence – existance
experience – experiance
extreme – extreem
fascinating – facinating
fiery – firey
fluorescent – flourescent
foreign – foriegn
friend – freind
fulfil – fullfil (American: fulfill)
gauge – guage
grateful – gratefull, greatful
guarantee – garantee, garentee, garanty
guidance – guidence
harass – harrass
height – heighth, heigth
hierarchy – heirarchy
hors d’oeuvres – hors derves, ordeurves
humorous – humerous
hygiene – hygene, hygine, hiygeine, higeine, hygeine
hypocrisy/hypocrite – hipocrit

I–K

ignorance – ignorence
imitate – immitate
immediately – imediately
indict – indite
independent – independant
indispensable – indispensible
inoculate – innoculate
intelligence – inteligence, intelligance
jewelry (UK: jewellery) – jewelery
judgment – judgement (issue in the U.S.)
kernel – kernal, distinct from homophone “colonel”

L–O

leisure – liesure
liaison – liason
library – libary, liberry
license – lisence(US always license, UK noun licence)
lightning – lightening
lose – loose
maintenance – maintainance, maintnance
medieval – medeval, medevil, mideval
memento – momento
millennium – millenium, milennium
miniature – miniture
minuscule – miniscule
mischievous – mischievious, mischevous, mischevious (The spelling “mischievious” and the corresponding pronunciation are still considered non-standard despite being current and existing since at least the 16th century.)
misspell – mispell, misspel
necessary – neccessary, necessery
niece – neice
neighbor – nieghbor
noticeable – noticable
occasion – occassion
occasionally – occasionaly, occassionally
occurrence – occurrance, occurence
occurred – occured
omission – ommision, omision
original – orignal
outrageous – outragous