Section 9.9

Spelling

The rules and conventions for the spelling of Standard American English words are very complex and are beyond the scope of this handbook. Correct spelling, however, is extremely important in technical and scientific writing because it establishes a writer's credibility by displaying his or her care and precision in dealing with information. A reader may hesitate to trust the data or design recommendations of a technical document that contains careless misspellings.

Here are a few suggestions to help ensure that your document is free of spelling errors.

• Always proofread your document for misspellings. If you are writing on a word processor, always use the spell checker but do not rely on it alone; it cannot catch one word substituted for another (discreet for discrete) or a typographical error that is a word (cod instead of code).
• Be consistent in the spelling of words in your document. Use the same dictionary when writing your first draft as when revising or editing the document.
• If you first learned British or Commonwealth English, be careful to use American English spellings of words rather than British forms. The following list summarizes some of the most common differences between American English and British English spelling.

AMERICAN ENGLISH	BRITISH ENGLISH
center, fiber	center, fibre
color, labor, odor	colour, labour, odour
defense, offense	defence, offence
encyclopedia, medieval	encyclopaedia, mediaeval
enroll, fulfill	enrol, fulfil
organize, civilization	organise, civilisation

## Spelling ##


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