Saturday 2 November 2013

Ten Misspellings Often Found in Business Content


While most word processors and emailing software do include built-in spell checkers, it’s surprising how many business letters still get sent out with misspellings that a spell checker should have certainly caught. Whether an executive forgot to run the spell check facility, did not notice the marked misspellings or was not sure whether they should be changed, you’ll find misspelled words in a variety of business correspondence including sales letters, official blogs and resumes.

Such misspelt words in business content can downgrade your professional standing in a few moments. To help you zero in on them before they are sent out, our writers have put together a list of the most common misspellings that we have noticed over the years.

Here are ten of the topmost slips with their correct forms:

  1. Accepteble: Remember the ‘table’ in ‘acceptable’, and you won’t make this mistake again. 
  2. Acommodate: Spelt ‘accommodate’, this word is long enough to accommodate both a double ‘c’ and a double ‘m’. 
  3. Arguement: There’s no silent ‘e’ in ‘argument’. Leave the 'e' in the word 'argue' only. 
  4. Calender: The right spelling has an ‘a’ in the last syllable of ‘calendar’. 
  5. Concensus: Spelt ‘consensus’, this word has nothing to do with carrying out a ‘census’ to find out if people are in agreement. Rather, it comes from the Latin word ‘consensus’ meaning “agreement, sympathy, accord, feeling”.
  6. Definate: The correct spelling is ‘definite’. Take a look at the ‘finite’ part of the word. 
  7. Independance: Although the feeling of being independent may make you feel like dancing, there’s no ‘dance’ in the spelling of the world. The correct spelling is ‘independence’.
  8. Ocurrance: The correct spelling is ‘occurrence’. Not only does this word have a double ‘c’ and a double ‘r’, notice that the suffix is an ‘ence’ rather than an ‘ance’ 
  9. Priviledge: The correct spelling is ‘privilege’. Note, there’s no ‘ledge’ in the spelling. Other misspellings of the word are ‘privlege’ without the second ‘i’. 
  10. Seperate: The correct spelling is ‘separate’. Think of the ‘par’ scoring system in golf, and you’ll get it right every time.
Of course, there are many more words that can be misspelled in business communication content, and one of these is the word 'misspelled' itself, which is sometimes wrongly spelled as 'mispelled', without the double 's'.

We hope this article helps you. If you require any further help with spellings and copy editing, contact us at info@staredits.com