meaning - Is a "misspelled" word which subsequently creates another word still considered misspelled?



According to Dictionary.com:



mis·spell·ing   [mis-spel-ing]
noun



  1. the act of spelling incorrectly: Note his misspelling of that word.

  2. an incorrectly spelled word: You have three misspellings in your letter.



Some people have told me that as long as the letters actually create a word, it's spelled correctly. This doesn't make sense to me, though. The example I'm using occurred in a recent Stack Exchange blog. They had accidentally typed in "word" instead of "world." I pointed out that "world" was misspelled (missing an "l") and another person said that it was technically not misspelled.


So when do we consider a word misspelled?
Only when our computer puts a red zig-zag line below it?


Isn't the word "word" still considered misspelled since it was meant to be "world" and it is not spelled correctly, and just happens to become a different word when this particular misspelling occurs? Is there perhaps a better definition of the word "misspelling" out there somewhere that can more accurately represent what exactly the word means?


Note: This isn't meant to be subjective. I'm hoping for factual information that supports it one way or the other.



Answer



The word you're looking for is "typo".


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