English students at Oxford University are guilty of poor standards in spelling, says one of the institution's former lecturers.

Bernard Richards, a former English lecturer at Brasenose College, has circulated a 142-word list of common spelling errors made by students in their university exams in 1995.

Richards described the mistakes as "alarming" and said: "Some of the solecisms on the list give cause for concern, since they indicate that the candidates have not really thought about the relationships in families of words, and the structure of specific words, with their prefixes and suffixes."

Below is a selection of the howlers to be found on Richards's list. (The correct spelling of the word is written on the right in bold.)

• abolishion - abolition
• angery - angry
• boundries - boundaries
• coincedence - coincidence
• definately/defineately - definitely
• desparation - desperation
• develope - develop
• dispair - despair
• fued - feud
• greatfully - gratefully
• grusome - gruesome
• imoral - immoral
• knats - gnats
• lable - label
• melodrammatic - melodramatic
• obselete - obsolete
• ocurs - occurs
• padel - paddle
• preditor - predator
• rediculous - ridiculous
• rejuvkinating - rejuvenating
• seperate - separate
• skepticle - sceptical
• solomn - solemn
• tendancy - tendency
• temprament - temperament
• twighlight - twilight
• wether - whether

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