Some Spelling Demons

P Words:

pamphlet
parallel
paroled
passed (always a verb); past (never a verb)
pastime
percent (not "per cent")
permissible
perseverance
perspective
piece (section); peace (as in world); peas (something to pretend you've eaten when you've actually shoveled them under your plate)
picnicking
Pittsburgh (in Pennsylvania. "Pittsburg" in California, Kansas, Oklahoma, and Texas)
playwright (forges a play rather than, "playwrite," writes a play)
poison
potatoes
precedent
preferred
prejudice
prerequisite
prerogative
presumptuous
privilege
probably
professor
pronunciation
publicly (the only word ending "icly")
pumpkin
 
Q and R Words:

questionable
questionnaire
quit/quite/quiet (frequently misrendered in Literotica stories)

Realtor (capitalized because it's been trademarked)
receive
recommend
recur/recurred/recurring/recurrence
regrettable
relevant
relieve
renowned
repetition
restaurateur
reverend/reverent
rhythm
ridiculous
roommate
 
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S Words:

sacrilegious (comes from "sacrilege," not from "religious")
Salina, Kansas, and Salinas, California
satellite
scot-free
seize
separate
sergeant
siege
ski/skiing
sometime (formerly); some time (as in some time ago); sometimes (at times)
souvenir
specifically
Stanford University, and Stamford, Connecticut
stationary (standing still); stationery (writing paper)
statue (sculpture); stature (height); statute (law)
strategy
stubbornness
stupefy
suburban
succeed (1 of 3 words ending "ceed")
supersede
surprise
 
T Words:

technique
tendency
their (possessive); they're ("they are"); there (not here)
therefore
to (preposition); two (number); too (also/excessive amount)
totally
toxin
tranquillity (two "l's")
truly
T-shirt (shows the shape of the shirt)
twelfth
tyrant/tyranny/tyrannous
 
W (no X, Y, Z) Words:

weird
Wedgwood (china)
Wednesday
wholly (entirely); holey (with holes); holy (sacred)
who's (who is); whose (possessive)
written
 
Here's one that trips me up unless i'm careful.

Champagne like the fizzy drink.

Champaign like the city

Loose and lose continue to cause me issues.

RWT
 
Here's one that trips me up unless i'm careful.

Champagne like the fizzy drink.

Right. I always have to look this one up when it's used. I also look it up because of the capitalization conundrum. As one of the inconsistencies of American English, "champagne" is not capitalized, B/burgundy can be or not, by option, and Bordeaux is capitalized when referring to the wine of those respective French regions.
 
J and K Words:

jewelry
jodhpurs
judgment (in U.S. style)

kindergarten
knowledge

EDIT: The Editor’s Forum is for authors and editors to discuss issues related to editing stories. People are forgetting this. It's not a place for personal arguments, attacks, or discussions not related to editing stories.
 
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EDIT: The Editor’s Forum is for authors and editors to discuss issues related to editing stories. People are forgetting this. It's not a place for personal arguments, attacks, or discussions not related to editing stories.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
..


EDIT: The Editor’s Forum is for authors and editors to discuss issues related to editing stories. People are forgetting this. It's not a place for personal arguments, attacks, or discussions not related to editing stories.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
I would like to add my two personal demons

Definitely- I never get it right, no matter how slow I go, I just can't get it

Rhythm- So bad at this one I copy and paste it from a doc of words I can;t spell that I keep open while I write.

And for the record I screwed them both up here and used spell check to fix them
 
I would like to add my two personal demons

Definitely- I never get it right, no matter how slow I go, I just can't get it

Sometimes it can be helpful to approach it from another word - do you have the same trouble with finitely/infinitely?

They all come from the same base, meaning a boundary, i.e. the end of something: "finite" is something with an ending, "infinite" is without end, "definite" is something whose boundaries are known.

"Finish" can also be useful for avoiding "definAtely", although it doesn't give you the tail of the word.
 
I would like to add my two personal demons

Definitely- I never get it right, no matter how slow I go, I just can't get it

Rhythm- So bad at this one I copy and paste it from a doc of words I can;t spell that I keep open while I write.

And for the record I screwed them both up here and used spell check to fix them

I nearly always mistype "something" as "someothing" when I go along. I have no idea why, and I pretty much always correct it as I go along. My fingers just move that way for some reason.

"Rhythm" is indeed a difficult one as I found out with personal experience. ;)
 
"Rhythm" is indeed a difficult one as I found out with personal experience. ;)

I have difficulty with that one too. As far as bad typing habits I have a tendency to interchange "I" and "A" in typing, but only when they are a single-character word.
 

One that frequently irks me: "diffuse" vs "defuse".

If you diffuse something, you're diluting it - which weakens it, but also spreads it over a wider area. If you really want to disarm it, better to defuse it.
 
Q and R Words:

[/B])

Realtor (capitalized because it's been trademarked)

Well, not entirely. Try this;

Re·al·tor (rl-tr, -tôr)
A service mark used for a real-estate agent affiliated with the National Association of Realtors. This service mark often occurs in print in lowercase and in the plural as well: "The economic aftershocks are already rippling through the area's non-defense businesses, from realtors to pizzerias" (New York Times).
 
Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, 11th edition (the dictionary of choice for fiction by virtually all publishers in the U.S. market):


"Re-al-tor . . . collective mark--used for a real estate agent who is a member of the National Association of Realtors."


There is no listing in the dictionary for "realtor" (lower cased), and the definition of "Realtor" does not provide for a lowercased form.

For Literotica you can, of course, do as you please. The guidance I provide is what's going to work for you in the publishing world.
 
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