How do you spell the lawmaking body?

The correct spelling of the word for the lawmaking body is Congress: capital C, then o-n-g-r-e-s-s, with two s's at the end. The word comes from the Latin congressus, meaning a coming together, from the verb congredi (to walk together), and entered English in the seventeenth century. The most common spelling errors are using one s at the end (Congres), doubling the n (Conngress), or missing the silent letters in casual writing.

Congress is capitalized when referring to the specific U.S. legislature (the United States Congress) and lowercase in generic uses such as a congress of nations. On the USCIS writing test the officer reads a sentence aloud and the applicant writes it by hand; sentences containing Congress appear frequently and may include "Congress meets in Washington, D.C.," "Congress makes federal laws," or "Congress can declare war."

Each new Congress is numbered consecutively from 1789, and Congress sits in two chambers (the Senate with 100 members and the House of Representatives with 435 voting members) in the United States Capitol building. The civics test asks several questions about Congress, including the names of the two chambers, term lengths for senators and representatives, and the powers vested in Congress under Article I of the Constitution.

Spelling Congress correctly is therefore a small but central writing skill: the word recurs throughout the test and connects to many civics topics about lawmaking, the legislative process, and federal-state relations. Congress is among the highest-frequency words on the writing vocabulary list and appears in dozens of practice sentences. Applicants who can write it confidently in one attempt clear a meaningful portion of the writing requirement at the interview.