Many questions related to spelling can be resolved simply by referring to a dictionary, since these questions tend to concern the specific way in which a word is correctly written, and by activating a good spell-check function in your word processor. But there are also issues that require more careful consideration and that cannot be resolved automatically. This section of the Guide provides recommendations on such issues, including the general conventions applicable to spelling, such as use of British and American variants, and the consequences of these conventions, for example digraphs and consonant doubling. It also refers to other considerations that are not strictly in the province of spelling but that nevertheless pertain to the orthography of the language; issues here include the use or non-use of diacritics, italicisation and hyphenation.

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