Grammar 101 Series: Misspelled and Confused Words

One of the quickest ways to appear unprofessional in your writing is to misspell words or have usage errors. Spelling first: Yes, spell check will catch most misspellings. But what about homonyms (there instead of their, for example)? Spell check won’t help there. A human eye is a much better proofreading tool than spell check! Then there are words that are easily and often confused (rather than just a typo, as with there vs. their). Here are some handy reference lists so you can keep your writing polished and professional.

35 Commonly Misspelled Words

Acceptable

Accommodate

Acquire

A lot

Apparent

A while

Broccoli

Caribbean

Cemetery

Changeable

Collectible

Conscience

Consensus

Embarrass

Existence

Fulfill

Guarantee

Harass

Indispensable

Judgment

Liaison

Memento

Misspell

Noticeable

Occurrence

Pastime

Personnel

Possess

Privilege

Pronunciation

Queue

Relevant

Supersede

Twelfth

Until

Commonly Confused Words

Accept/except

Adapt/adopt

Adverse/averse

Advice/advise

Affect/effect

Allowed/aloud

Ambiguous/ambivalent

Amoral/immoral

Ascent/assent

Beside/Besides

Between/among

Born/borne

Breech/breach

Compliment/complement

Comprise/compose

Continuous/continual

Council/counsel

Defuse/diffuse

Desert/dessert

Disburse/disperse

Disinterested/uninterested

E.g./i.e.

Elude/allude

Envelope/envelop

Further/farther

Historic/historical

Hone/home

Illusion/allusion

Imply/infer