Sir

I have long suspected that “phosphorus” is the most frequently misspelt word in the environmental sciences, with “phosphorous” — the adjectival spelling — being the primary offender. Although phosphorous is a legitimate adjective meaning phosphorus-rich, this is rarely the meaning intended when this spelling is used in the literature. Your News story on the politics of phosphorus pollution in the Everglades, “Judge's sacking rocks Everglades clean-up” (Nature 425, 551; 2003), provides yet another example of this confusion. The word appears eight times in the News story and photo caption, three times ending in “-ous” and five times “-us” — the ratio being in favour of propriety, but only marginally.

Many students and colleagues who misspell the word assert that phosphorous is the British spelling. This is clearly not the case. But I wonder if Nature, as a journal with British spellings but a wide audience in the United States, intended a compromise solution to this spelling problem in its News story.

Perhaps the idea is that “yous guys” (an Americanism) and “us guys” can compromise and agree that either spelling is acceptable. But I rather think it is just “us”.