Spelling a word phonetically, however, can sometimes get us heading in the right direction.

You may remember rhymes from elementary school such as вЂњi before e, except after cвЂќ and вЂњwhen two vowels go walking, the first one does the talking.вЂќ From an early age, we became acutely aware of howД¬omplicated the English language can be and that how a word sounds isnвЂ™t necessarily how it is spelled. Often, though, an MT will need to begin the search for a word based on phonetics, or how the word sounds. An MT who has very good base knowledge of prefixes, root words, and suffixes may be able to spell a word based on its meaning. With hundreds of thousands of words available for our use, no medical transcriptionist is going to be able to spell every single one of them. Words arenвЂ™t always spelled how they sound. The rule of thumb is this: In medical reports, use the spelling that is preferred by medical dictionaries. In contrast, the same compiled dictionary site provides 6 medical matches for fontanel yet provides 9 medical matches for fontanelle. Correspondingly, provides 21 general entries for fontanel but only 18 general entries for fontanelle. If you type fontanelle into an MSWord document, you will find it gets underlined in red and the suggested spelling fontanel is given. Sometimes the preferred English spelling is not the preferred medical spelling. This particular term brings up another issue, which will be discussed next. For example, if you look up fontanel in DorlandвЂ™s Medical Dictionary, you will see that it re-directs users to fontanelle (the preferred spelling). The spelling that has the definition with it is the preferred spelling, while the term that redirects the user to another spelling is the less-preferred spelling. This can be determined by using a reliable medical dictionary. In other words, use the preferred spelling. Sometimes your account guidelines might simply state to use AHDI BOS guidelines for spellings. If your client has a preference, their preference is more important than anyone elseвЂ™s preference. How should you make this decision? First, check your account specifics. Whatever the case, you must be able to decide which spelling to use. There may be a British and an English spelling, or an old and a new spelling, or simply a more and a less common spelling. ItвЂ™s inevitable that somewhere during your MT training, you will be made aware of the fact that some terms have more than one correct spelling. There can be more than one spelling for a single term. Although sources cannot agree on how many words there are in the English language, one thing is for certain: there are a lot of words-anywhere from several hundred thousand to close to a million, all comprised of the measly 26 letters in our English alphabet! The sheer number of words available for use can sometimes make word building and transcription seem like a daunting task, but the challenge doesnвЂ™t end there! LetвЂ™s take a look at some of the word challenges medical transcriptionists face and how these challenges can be overcome.

Medical spelling dictionary for word