Windowsill

I don't think I have ever written the word "windowsill" in my life before a week ago (and barring this post, haven't written it since). Odd that I have used the word so many times, but never written it, and don't really recall reading it. Even odder was trying to spell it.

I had an idea of where to begin: "window". I was quite confident that I could spell that part of it. "Sill", though, was a bit tougher. Judging from the sound of it, I figured it was spelled in the same manner as "bill", "dill", "fill", "gill", "hill", "ill", "kill", "mill", "nill", "pill", "quill", "till", and "will". What I did not know was whether it was a single word or a two-word phrase. And if it was a single word, would there be two L's or one?

I had three reasonable guesses: "window sill", "windowsill", and "windowsil". At this point, I said screw it and typed it into Google. I found that both "window sill" and "windowsill" had plenty of hits. Dictionaries also had both variants listed, but it did seem that resources leaned toward "windowsill" as the primary form. As such, that is the one I used.

The point of this story is that there are a lot of words out there. There are a lot of words out there that you know and probably have never written or read. Just because you don't know how to spell them immediately does not mean you should avoid the word (it doesn't mean you should spell it incorrectly or trust spellcheck to catch it, either.) Use your understanding of the language to deduce what it should or could be. If that fails, go to the internet. It is a trusty tool. Just remember that, much like any tool, it will not be very helpful if you do not know how to use it properly.