cannot & can not

"Can not" is never correct; it's either "can't" or "cannot".

Pieanne
"Can not" is never correct; it's either "can't" or "cannot".I've no idea why it never came up before in my education as a native speaker of English in the U.S., but I didn't reallize that 'can not' is unacceptable until I was well into my adult years. Spoken English, of course, doesn't reveal that it's a single word, and I do not avoid c

Sorry, no... !

Yet, I could imagine some extreme examples, perhaps related to the "the la Tourrettes" disease (it's just been mentioned somewhere today in the English Forums) where one could say "I can not say *** three times in a row", but the negation here doesn't refer to can. It means "I'm able not to say *** 3 times in a row".

Pieanne
"Can not" is never correct; it's either "can't" or "cannot".

Cannot is most commonly used as the negative form, but can not is also sometimes used.

(page 256, A Communicative Grammar of English, Pearson Education Limited 2002)

Thanks! Such post is very helpful to me and to others I suppose.

Can I say when not is stressed, can not should not be written as cannot?

My understanding of the two is that "can not" is an emphatic form of "cannot." But I like the way you express it.

Ikia

Pieanne"Can not" is never correct; it's either "can't" or "cannot".

." The only context in which can not, two words, occurs is as an emphatic alternative: "You can do it, or you can not do it." In that case, it is clearly two separately spoken words, with the not given special emphasis, and equally clearly it means something very differ

IkiaCan I say when not is stressed, can not should not be written as cannot?

My understanding of the two is that "can not" is an emphatic form of "cannot." But I like the way you express it.

Ikia

Exactly!

Let me quote a passage from

He cannot speak English. = He is not able to speak English. He does not have the proper skills to speak English. He does not know how to speak English. OR: He is not allowed to speak English.
He can not speak English. = He is free not to speak English if he doesn't want to. He does not have to speak English. He is able to choose not to speak English. [rare usage]

CalifJim"Can not" (two words) is never acceptable when the intent is to negate the modality.

Sometimes we English learners from non-English speaking countries have to read historical documents like below.

"Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on