Spelling Traps

Suite vs suit — a classic spelling trap:

• suite /swiːt/ — "sweet" — sounds exactly like the word sweet. A "suite" is a matched set: a "test suite", "office suite", "a suite of tools", "CI suite".
• suit /suːt/ — "soot/soo-t" — the clothing, or "it suits me", "lawsuit", "follow suit".

The most common error is saying "soot" for the test suite. In tech you almost always mean suite = "sweet": "run the test suite" = "run the test SWEET".

Watch the third word too:

• sweet /swiːt/ — "sweet" — the adjective; identical in sound to "suite".

So "suite" and "sweet" are homophones, while "suit" stands apart with the /uː/ vowel. In a sentence: "The entire SWEET of integration tests passed."

Live — two pronunciations by part of speech:

• Verb /lɪv/ — "liv" — rhymes with "give": "servers live in the cloud", "where does this config live?"
• Adjective / adverb /laɪv/ — "lyve" — rhymes with "five": "the site is live", "a live environment", "live updates", "go live", "live reload".

This is the trap: "the feature went live" uses /laɪv/ ("lyve"), but "the data lives in S3" uses /lɪvz/ ("livz"). Same spelling, different vowel, chosen by grammar.

Related:

• alive /əˈlaɪv/ — "uh-LYVE" (keep the process alive)
• living /ˈlɪvɪŋ/ — "LIV-ing"

In context: "We go LYVE on Friday; the database LIVZ in eu-west-1."

Read — a heteronym (same spelling, two sounds):

• Present / imperative / infinitive /riːd/ — "reed": "read the README", "read the value", "a read-only field", "read replica" ("REED replica").
• Past tense & past participle /rɛd/ — "red" (like the colour): "I read the docs yesterday", "the file was read into memory".

So your commit line is: "I RED the docs yesterday, now please REED the README." The spelling stays "read" both times — only the tense tells you the vowel.

Tech collocations:

• read/write — "REED-write" (file permissions, I/O)
• read receipt — "REED re-SEET"
• "the config was RED at startup" (past)

Compare the homophone pair read (past) and red — identical sound, different word.

Lead vs led — verb tense plus a metal trap:

• lead (verb, present) /liːd/ — "leed": "this will lead to a crash", "lead the team", "a tech lead" ("tech LEED").
• led (past tense of lead) /lɛd/ — "led": "that change led to an outage", "the migration led to downtime".
• lead (the metal) /lɛd/ — "led" — confusingly spelled like the verb but pronounced like the past tense.

So the present-tense verb "lead" is "LEED", but its past tense "led" is "LED" — and the metal "lead" is also "LED". The spelling "lead" therefore has two sounds depending on meaning.

Collocations: "tech lead" (LEED), "lead engineer" (LEED), "it led to a regression" (LED). Be careful in writing: the past tense is spelled led, never "lead".

Two final spelling traps:

close — verb vs adjective differ in the final consonant:

• Verb /kloʊz/ — "kloze" — the s sounds like z, like "rose": "close the PR", "close the connection", "close the issue".
• Adjective / adverb /kloʊs/ — "kloce" — the s is a hiss, like "dose": "a close match", "close to the deadline", "a close call".

resume vs résumé:

• resume (verb, "to continue") /rɪˈzjuːm/ — "re-ZYOOM" / "re-ZOOM": "resume the build", "resume a paused job".
• résumé / resume (a CV, US English) /ˈrɛzʊmeɪ/ — "REZ-oo-may" — stress on the first syllable, "-ay" ending. The accents mark the different word.

Only option B states both correctly. In context: "Please CLOZE the ticket; the deadline is very CLOCE."