Spellings Part 11 – Fighting the Spellcheckers

Today I’m going to put my warpaint on (and that’s one word too) and help you fight the spellcheckers, because the annoying things don’t always know what they’re talking about. Please bear in mind that, as far as possible, I base the spellings on The New Oxford Style Manual and the OED.

1. facade = no italics and not the French spelling façade, which the spellchecker in Word so often changes it to.

2. mindset = one word even though Microsoft spellchecker doesn’t like it.

3. skill set = two words, no hyphen. Although the Microsoft spellchecker indicates that this can be written as one word, I cannot find any evidence of this being the case in either UK or US dictionaries.

4. think tank = two words

5. hashtag = one word, despite what spellcheckers might tell you

6. warpaint

7. approx. = needs the point as it’s an abbreviation

8. republish = one word. No hyphens please

9. neurolinguistic (as in neurolinguistic programming = NLP) = one word, no hyphens

10. aka = also known as = no points. The Chicago Manual of Style disagrees with this usage and prefers a.k.a.

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

Bite-sized Tips No. 15: Spellings Part 12 – Pesky Hyphens

This post was first published on 21/1/2015 on my previous blog.

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