
Unit 11: Technical writing - Spelling
Spell checkers are extremely helpful but not infallible, especially with typing errors. Consider the words now and not in the following two sentences:
- The results are now presented in detail.
- The results are not presented in detail.
These two sentences have very different meanings and a spell checker would not find anything wrong with either of them.
Some frequently misspelt words are listed below:
accessible | liaison | personnel | recommend |
benefited | necessary | possession | relevant |
gauge | occasion | receive | sincerely |
There are also words with similar spellings but different meanings that are frequently confused. For example:
compliment and complement | principal and principle |
lose and loose | stationary and stationery |
personnel and personal | where and were |
And words that sound the same but have different meanings such as:
band and banned | their and there |
for and four | to, too and two |
sight, site and cite | whether, weather and wether (a castrated ram!). |
A sensible idea is to have a dictionary nearby. It is best not to use your auto correct function as unrecognised technical words and proper names may be altered to words that are known to your word processor.
Top tips for technical writing by Vince Ricci: CIEE, Joe Schall: Penn State University, Glynis Perkin: Loughborough University, edited by Marion Kelt: GCU is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.
Based on a work at http://www.slideshare.net/tokyovince/introduction-to-technical-writing-4305074 http://www.slideshare.net/engCETL/technical-report-writing-handout https://www.e-education.psu.edu/styleforstudents/c1_p15.html.