25 Frequently Misspelled & Misused Words That Haunt PR Pros

It's often the most routine and commonly used words and phrases that can ruin your PR copy.

No professional communicator—no matter how experienced—is immune from the pain and downright embarrassment of spelling or word usage errors. Spell-check can only go so far and, in fact, can be a dangerous crutch (it won't catch homophones).

To help you remain vigilant, we asked the PR News community to share some misspelled and misused words that have burned them in the past:

          Homophones (and near homophones): 

1. Band/banned

2. Colombia/Columbia

3. Complimentary/complementary

4. Fare/fair

5. Forth/fourth 

6. Insure/ensure

7. Its/it's

8. Principal/principle 

9. Right/write

10. Sale/sail 

11. Scene/seen

12. Seam/seem

13. Sight/site

14. Their/they're/there

15. Then/than

16. We're/were

17. Whose/who's 

18. Worse/worst

19. You're/your
    

    Common misspellings:

20. Public (pubic)

21. Tomorrow (tomorow)

22. February (Febuary)

23. Wednesday (Wendesday)

24. Definitely (definitly)

25. Received (recieved)

Which misspelled and misused words haunt your dreams?

Follow Bill Miltenberg: @bmiltenberg