Appendix A

Homophone Misspellings and Commonly Confused Words

Many words sound alike but are spelled differently. A homophone is a word that sounds like another word but has a different meaning and, usually, a different spelling. People can easily misuse a homophone like there or they’re when they actually mean their. The result is seen as a misspelling, a “wrong word” error, or both. Spelling checkers rarely detect any problem at all because technically these misused words are correctly spelled, at least to a computer program.

Below are words that are often confused with one another because they sound similar or exactly alike. (Some terms have several meanings, so we provide only the most common or relevant.) Most are true homophones, but we include a few other words that are often confused for one another. This list focuses on U.S. (rather than British) spellings.