Business writing | Spelling: Words your spellchecker won’t correct

By Anton Kelly

If you are interested in this topic, take a look at our University of Cape Town Business Writing and Legal Documents course.

These days, with most of us working on computers with spellcheckers, we don’t need to pay as much attention to our spelling as we used to. We no longer have to remember how many c’s and s’s there are in ‘necessary’ or how many c’s and m’s there are in ‘accommodation’, as the spellchecker does that for us. But the invention of the spellchecker also puts pressure on us because now bad spelling is less pardonable than it may have been in the past.

There are a number of mis-spellings that the spellchecker won’t correct. This means that we can’t rely on the spellchecker to completely rid our documents of errors. Here are two errors that you will need to correct yourself:

1. Typos that result in real words
Look at this sentence: ‘I was so glad to receive a letter form you’. Can you spot the error in it? Yes, ‘form’ should be ‘from’ but the spellchecker does not pick this up as ‘form’ is a real word. The spellchecker just sees ten recognizable words and moves on. Similarly the grammar checker, those irritating wavy green lines, does not pick this up either.

2. Words that are spelt differently but sound the same and have different meanings
Should you use ‘licence’ or ‘license’? ‘Practice’ or ‘practise’? If you use the wrong one the spellchecker won’t correct it as again these words, even if used incorrectly, are real words. However, this time the real words have not resulted from typos but rather from common errors that we make in determining when to use which. Below we have listed some of the commonly confused words and give you tools to decide which is best in context.

Practice vs practise and licence vs license
S is the verb, c is the noun.

“Sadly it was not the vicar’s practice to practise what he preached.”
“Licensed premises” have been granted a licence to sell alcohol.

Enquiry vs inquiry
An ‘enquiry’ is just a question whereas an ‘inquiry’ is a formal procedure usually arranged to whitewash official incompetence or dishonesty.

Principal vs principle
The word ‘principal’ can be used as a noun meaning a person who is the head of an institution or as an adjective meaning ‘the most important’. The word ‘principle’ denotes a moral belief.

“The college principal’s principal principle was that of justice.”
Okay, we admit that was overkill but when else would we be able to write a sentence that makes you say a word that sounds the same three times in a row?

Stationary vs stationery
‘Stationary’ is an adjective meaning standing still whereas ’stationery’ is a noun referring to pens, pencils, paper etc.

This article is published under the Creative Commons Attribution license.