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Anonymous Posted 14 years ago
Grammar

cannot or can not

Hi, I am a non native English speaker and I had a discussion with  a collegue who was persistent in his statement that in stead of using cannot (or can't) it is grammatically right to write "can not", while I have been thought this is grammatically wrong.

Can someone help me finding the rule here?
  

Top answer

—Usage. CANNOT is sometimes also spelled CAN NOT. The one-word spelling is by far the more common: Interest rates simply cannot continue at their present level.

— Cool Breeze

  • —Usage.
  • CANNOT is sometimes also spelled CAN NOT.
  • The one-word spelling is by far the more common: Interest rates simply cannot continue at their present level.
  • The contraction CAN'T is most common in speech and informal writing.
  • Random House Unabridged Dictionary CB
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2 Answers
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—Usage. CANNOT is sometimes also spelled CAN NOT. The one-word spelling is by far the more common: Interest rates simply cannot continue at their present level. The contraction CAN'T is most common in speech and informal writing.
Random House Unabridged Dictionary

CB
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I have no idea what Random House is talking about. The negative form of "can" is "cannot", and "can not" is not a spelling variant, it is a mistake. Usually.

"Can not" is possible only under certain circumstances. For example, someone might say, "You can go, or you can not go—the choice is yours."

P.S. - It's "instead", not "in stead".
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