I tried already.
Rather than - Rather then
supposed to have - supposed to of
Insure/Ensure/Assure
Or then there are the words which are separate, but shouldn’t be. Like, what do you call the place where the government meets? That depends on whether by “place” I mean “city”, in which case it’s “capital”, or if I mean “building”, in which case it’s “capitol”.
Or what’s the word for “more far”? There’s “farther” and “further”, depending on whether “far” is geographical or metaphorical.
The second definition of “fortuitous” on Google is:
happening by a lucky chance; fortunate.
That’s the only way I’ve ever heard it used
Yes, but …
“That was a lucky break”, “That was a fortuitous break”, and “That was a fortunate break” are all pretty much interchangeable.
“You were fortunate to draw the winning ticket” and “You were fortuitous to draw the winning ticket”? Not so much.
IOW “fortuitous” is not simply the fancy corporate/pretentious-speak ‘conjugation’ of “fortunate.”
I remember my Bank once had a desk labelled “inquiries” and across the room another labelled “enquiries”. It was odd.
Capitol/Capital. Not too surprising, as the Capitol Building is usually found in the Capital City.
Capitol has been misused numerous times here on the SDMB.
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To make matters worse (for me), and this is not a matter of a cross-language pun, the word “affect,” thankfully seen even in English writing with the German orthography “Affekt,” is a common word in German musical esthetics, and is carried over in English language. “Doctrine of affections” works to refer to the general idea, but “affection” as the noun never caught on, at least in modern English.
I used to use it in academic writing so often till this day I make the usual mistake of spelling everything that sounds like it with an “a.”
In plain old English the noun-with-an-“a” also is a normal term in psychological/psychiatric contexts for the general demonstration of emotion, usually accompanied by an adjective.
Mine: “lie” is present tense intransitive, “lay” is present tense transitive or past tense intransitive.
Easy way to remember: “now I lay me down to sleep” is correct.
True. Although I’ve never heard it used as what google claims is the primary definition:
happening by accident or chance rather than design.
You wouldn’t say to a grieving mother “it was purely fortuitous that your son was killed by that drunk driver”.
Affect/Effect is a particularly pernicious pair, because they have their more common meanings, which are similar to each other except that one is a verb and one is a noun, and then each one also has a different meaning, with the verb and noun swapped, and one of those meanings is kinda similar to the two main meanings. I think if I were learning English, I would view affect/effect as a horrible prank.
In response to this and the preceding ones which prompted it:
There are a few SD threads on “fortuitous” and “serendipity” (NB: not “SerenDipity[sup]TM[/sup]”) and the best of them is Is there a precise antonym for ‘serendipity’
Sorta like the confusion / double meaning in this classic sentence: “If it wasn’t for bad luck I’d have no luck at all.”
Does “luck” mean “any happenstance”, or only “favorable happenstance”? Depends; it’s used both ways.
English is … special that way. 
The fact that the words are similar isn’t the surprising part. The surprise is that they’re different at all. Why isn’t it the Capital Building found in the Capital City? Or maybe the Capitol Building found in the Capitol City, if you prefer.
site and sight too (two / to)
The problem with these two happenstance homonyms, or the problem with the English language currently, is that there is no word “scite” to mean both, because there ought to be.
How many posts here–we GQers, sticklers for proper verification–will cite a site (or the information contained therein), and would like to indicate that the indexical statement is to a particular medium. Why, because our eager fingers can immediately reference it, as opposed to taking it on faith/respect/probation until further research for any other medium.
I often write the heads up “site/cite” (both words) if a whole bunch of refs are coming down the pike, and it annoys me every time.
So, thumbs up/down on “scite?” (It also kinda looks like scilicet, which adds a legal/serious tone.)
A phrase I’ve been seeing a lot lately: “bald-faced lie” (or “bald-face lie”). This seems rather new, as I don’t recall seeing it until recently. The phrase as I’ve always known it is “bare-faced lie”.
Is “bald-faced lie” something that can only be told by unbearded people?
Is “bare-faced lie” something that can only be told by people who aren’t wearing ski masks?
And as for stanch/staunch (mentioned by OP in Post #1): This galls me too, as I see it most in news articles written by supposedly professional journalists who should know better. It’s a one-way mistake too: I often see “staunch” written where “stanch” is meant: “Staunch the bleeding”, “Staunch the flow of dollars”. I never see “stanch” written where “staunch” is meant: Trump disses our *stanch allies.
Much to my dizzgust, some “descriptivist” fictionaries have caved to popular mal-usage and now list “staunch” as an alternate spelling for “stanch”, meaning to stop the flow of something. This must be staunchly stanched!
Speaking of which, has anybody mentioned principal / principle yet? Did I miss it?
Is the principal’s office building called the Principol?
[del]Scene[/del] Seen in a nearby thread (“Terraforming…”) in this forum just today:
I think that means all the Earth’s resources (“brought to bare”) have been strip-mined?
Yeah, wreckless driving doesn’t sound so bad, now does it?
Took me a minute to sort out peddle/pedal…
I offer guess and suppose, as in “I guess the branch manager had a wicked sense of humor” and “I suppose there are worse things.”