Homophones

A homophone is one of two or more words that are pronounced the same but differ in meaning and spelling. A common example is they're, their and there. Although a lot of people get mixed up between homophones they can be particularly irksome for people with dyslexia.

Homophones won't be picked up by a traditional spell checker as no spelling mistake has been made. They also won't be picked up using text-to-speech as the words sound very similar. The only way of checking for the presence of a homophone is to use a specialist homophone checker such as the one found in TextHelp Read & Write.

A homonym, incidentally, is a little different in that it is two or more word which are both pronounced and spelt the same but differ in meaning. An example if a homonym is bank (as in an embankment) and bank (where money is kept).