Using the Dictionary

Use the American Heritage Dictionaryonline for spelling, denotation, connotation, and word division. If a word isn't listed there, go to Webster's Third New International Dictionary. If it isn't there either, don't use it.

Spelling
Use the first spelling listed except in official titles or proper names. If a compound noun isn't listed as one word, use two.

acknowledgment (not acknowledgement)

adviser (not advisor)

catalog (not catalogue)

course work (not coursework)

employee (not employe)

fieldwork (not field work)

flier ('a paper handout' or 'a person who flies,' not flyer)

fundraising (not fund-raising)

gray (not grey)

judgment (not judgement)

percent (not per cent)

theater (not theatre)

toward (not towards)


Department of Theater Arts


vender (not vendor)


but: 
Robinson Theatre and University Theatre

Accents or hyphens are sometimes essential for spelling or pronouncing a word correctly. See also Diacritical Marks under Punctuation.

café, cliché


co-op (short for 'cooperative housing') vs.
coop (where a chicken lives)


résumé (noun) vs. resume (verb)

Although spell-checking programs can help you locate errors in electronic manuscripts, you can't rely on them as a substitute for your eyes and brain. Many spell checkers can't, for example, choose preferred spellings, verify the spelling of proper nouns, recognize technical terms, pick out contextual errors such as dreadlocks for deadlocks, or distinguish among homonyms such as their, there, and they're.

Avoiding Disaster
You might need to search for potentially embarrassing typographical errors:

asses for assess

curse for course

faulty for faculty

Lousie for Louise

Double check the spelling of proper nouns and of non-English words and phrases. After you've run spell checks, read the manuscript again for anything the program might have missed or misconstrued.

Computer Terms
Use the following forms:

database (not data base or data-base)

e-mail (not E-mail or email)

Internet (not internet)

online (not on-line)

web (not Web)

website (not web site or web-site)

World Wide Web (not World-Wide Web)

Electronic Addresses
URL (pronounced Earl) stands for Uniform Resource Locator.
It's the address of a World Wide Web document. For example,
the URL for the Office of University Publications home page is
http://darkwing.uoregon.edu/~uopubs/

It's critical that both URLs and Internet addresses be copied exactly—including punctuation, capitalization, and spacing. Place the address in brackets < > when it occurs in running text. Try not to break the address if you can help it. If you must break it, do it before a slash or a period.

Denotation
Although some words may seem to be interchangeable, try to use the best term to express your intended meaning. The verbs assure, ensure, and insure illustrate this kind of precise word choice.

I assure you that it's true.


Arrive early to ensure yourself a seat.


You should insure valuable property.

Connotation
Connotation is as important as denotation. Besides avoiding sexist and pejorative language, we now worry about political correctness. This topic is much too complex to discuss here, but the American Heritage Dictionary contains informative usage notes; see, for example, black and color. The following list illustrates the differences between surface and underlying meanings as well as shifting intellectual and emotional attitudes about language. See also gender or sex under Troublesome Terms.

colorful people vs. colored people, minorities, people of color

Blacks, Afro-Americans, African Americans

Recent shifts in sensibility account for the following:

developing country (not Third World country)

international student (not foreign student)

second language (not foreign language)

Word Division
Word division can be as tricky as spelling. For example, you can divide spell-ing but not spelled, rag-ged but not bagged. Knowl-edge divides according to pronunciation, but proj-ect (noun) and pro-ject (verb) divide according to meaning. Consult the dictionary whenever you're in doubt.

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