Spelling Contract #8 Name Test Date 1: Fill & Download for Free

Yes. The only way a spelling mistake will cause problems in a contract is if it somehow alters the meaning of that contract or if it causes the phrase to have more than one meaning. In such a case, only that particular sentence would be in dispute. Conractor is clearly a spelling error, it has no other meaning and most likely it is clear from the rest of the contract what the word is meant to be.

The answer is that it depends. Spelling or grammatical errors are common in contracts because it's tough to be perfect in long, often obtuse documents, even those prepared by expensive lawyers. And yet, the overwhelming majority of such contracts are perfectly enforceable.This is because the law recognizes that a scrivener’s error (a clerical error named for the individuals who used to write out legal documents by hand) can be corrected so long as the evidence of the error is “clear, convincing, and precise.” So if, for example, John and Judy sign a contract whereby John sells his home at 123 Main Street for $300,000 to Judy, and there are a few lines where John is mistakenly referred to as James (maybe the drafter used a prior contract rather than starting from scratch and forgot to change every instance of James to John), this is unlikely to render the contract unenforceable where it is clear who “James” really is in the document.But suppose instead that John is a real estate developer who owns several properties on Main Street, and that instead of 123 Main Street, the contract lists 124 Main Street, a nicer home worth $500,000, for the $300,000 sales price. The parties could always agree to correct the error when detected and make the contract enforceable, but if Judy tried to claim that she was owed 124 Main, the agreement would likely be unenforceable because there was no “meeting of the minds” between the parties on the very important (material) term of the property to be sold. So here, a mistake is likely to doom the agreement.

English orthography is very variable and styles change from writer to writer and period to period. There aren't any really predictable patterns, except that spellings attempt to follow speech (though they often fail). If there were to be a name for it, it would probably just be contraction or simplification (I have not studied orthography in depth, and few linguists have, so whether this really is a universal pattern or not is highly debatable).In this particular example, we have a compound word that works it's way through the three different ways written English deals with compounds. "week end" was probably used when the term was coined and when it was still uncommon. When the concept of a business week took hold, "weekend" began to be treated more like a unique noun than a compound because it refers to something specific and concrete.