Spellings Part 9 – All One Word Again

Here are a few more spellings I’ve come across during my translation travels, some of which are not recognised by the spellchecker in Word. They all happen to be one word as well. As some of them are closed compound nouns (two words that have been put together to form a new term), the Microsoft spellchecker might not let you know that you should not have written them separately.

Please note that the bite-sized tips series is based on the New Oxford Style Manual, so spellings may vary in other style guides.

1. bullring

2. minibar

3. firefighter (and naturally firefighting. Not two words and no hyphen whatever the Microsoft Office Word spellchecker says)

Whilst I’m on the subject of the spellchecker not always knowing what’s what:

4. jacuzzi is not spelled (or spelt) with a capital letter

5. flowmeter

6. headworks

7. gasholder

8. no. this is the contraction (abbreviated form) of the Latin numero for number. Contractions (in which the middle part of the word has been left out) don’t usually have points at the end; however, the point is necessary here otherwise we might confuse it with no (the opposite of yes). The plural of no. is nos. or nos – again, as it is a contraction, there really shouldn’t be a point at the end, but as there is one after the singular form, nos. is also accepted for the sake of consistency.

9. noes this is the plural of no (the opposite of yes). Not to be confused with nos (see 8 above)

10. lifeguard

Bite-sized Tips No. 11: Spellings Part 8 – Only One Word

Bite-sized Tips No. 13: Spellings Part 10 – By the Sea

This post was first published on 6/11/2014 on my previous blog.

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