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Spellings and Misspellings

One would think it would be unnecessary to write anything about spellings, but I have noticed an increasing number of odd spellings -- clearly, many people refuse to run a spell-checker. The following are some words that I have seen spelled creatively.

  1. Words Often Misspelled

    1. Ambiguous
    2. Commitment and committed
    3. Occurrence and occurred
    4. Omit and, especially, omitted
    5. Opportunity
    6. Pseudo (mostly a prefix)
    7. Referrer (enshrined in the HTTP standard as referer (sic))
    8. Succinct
    9. Supersede
    10. Weird

  2. Nonwords and Such

    1. Ad hoc is not to be hyphenated
    2. Adverse, when you mean averse
    3. Advice when you mean advise or vice versa
    4. Aide when you mean aid or vice versa
    5. Alongwith
    6. Alot
    7. Alright
    8. Atleast
    9. Binded: in most technical settings you mean bound
    10. Bottleneck is a word: don't split it
    11. Complexer: more complex than?
    12. Can not: most times should be cannot—in English grammar, "cannot" has the logical effect of not(can(...)), whereas "can not" has the logical effect of can(not(...))
    13. Conjuncting is not a word; perhaps you mean conjoining
    14. Cost, when you mean price—the difference is critical: it is called profit :-)
    15. Criteria is plural
    16. Duplicity and duplication are both fine, but carry different meanings
    17. Emphasize on doesn't work; emphasize is OK
    18. Exhaustive is not the same as exhausting
    19. Faculty: an academic organizational unit popular in Europe, similar to College in the US; also used for the entire academic body of a university in the US; a faculty is a capability; crucially, a professor is not a faculty though they may be faculty members and ones hopes mostly in possession of their faculties
    20. Frame work: should be framework
    21. From the scratch (has a funny connotation): should be from scratch
    22. Id or id: should be ID or identifier, unless you have Freudian psychoanalysis in mind
    23. Lead, when you mean led, or the other way around
    24. Limited, when you mean short, small, few; if you have an opinion, express it; nearly everything of interest is limited—e.g., the number of water molecules on Earth is limited
    25. Loose, when you mean lose, or the other way around
    26. Middleman is a word: don't split it
    27. Onto is not a word, except as a kind of function
    28. Parallely is not a word; perhaps you mean "in parallel"?
    29. Phenomena is plural
    30. Prepone is not the opposite of postpone
    31. "Request for" is never OK as a verb: "a request for quotes" is fine but "Bob requests for a quote" is wrong
    32. Righteous, when you mean right, or the other way around
    33. Splitted is not a word
    34. Thereby, when you mean therefore
    35. Throughout is a word: don't split it
    36. Tiresome is not the same as tiring
    37. Updation is not a word, although insertion and deletion are
    38. Uptil
    39. Upto
    40. Utilize: use "use" instead

  3. Never in the Plural

    Or even singular for that matter. These are mass nouns, which means you shouldn't be attempting constructions such as "a software" or "three softwares". You can say "a software module" or "three software modules", however.

    1. Advice
    2. Code (to mean software modules; never to be used in the singular either, for that matter)
    3. Evidence
    4. Following
    5. Information
    6. Jargons
    7. Noises
    8. People (if you mean persons or users)
    9. Research—you don't do researches (Sherlock Holmes did and Henri Poincare did, but times have changed)
    10. Software
    11. Traffics