Quick guide to scientific words that are easily missed during a spellcheck: free infographic

Using the spellcheck tool of your word processing software is a good way of making sure there are no mistakes in your scientific manuscript.

However, the spellcheck will miss words that are spelled correctly if they are very similar to a word you actually intended to use. For example, when I was a student I always typed preformed instead of performed – and it drove my PhD supervisor mad!

We often see these types of errors and have made a list of the most common scientific words that can be missed during a spellcheck.

Here is a free infographic that you can save or print and keep beside your computer, so you won’t miss any of these words when spellchecking your scientific paper or thesis. We have also provided a short definition for each word, so you can check you have used the correct spelling for each.

You can use the ‘Find and Replace’ feature of your word processing software to make sure you have used the correct version of each word throughout your manuscript.