Personal - personnel

Personal and personnel are two words that are sometimes confused, falling into a group that Fowler called malaprop 1: "Words containing the same stem but ... distinguished by termination or prefix". They have distinct meanings.

Personal [pronounced with the stress on the first syllable: PErs'nel, IPA: /ˈpɜː s^ən əl/] is an adjective (describing word). Use it with other words to mean something like 'private', '[my] own': it means 'belonging to my person'. E. g. "Take your personal belongings with you"; "my personal opinion is ...". This word is spelled with a single '-n-', followed by an '-a-'.

The adverb (the word ending in -ly) is always personally.

Personnel [pronounced with the emphasis on the last syllable: purse-on-EL, IPA: /ˌpɜː^rs ə ˈəl/] is a noun (the name of something). It can be used with other nouns to describe them: 'a personnel officer', or 'a personnel report'. It means roughly 'staff', or 'the people involved': in modern business, it is often called 'Human Resources', or 'Human Relations'.

Note the spelling of personnel with a double '-n-' followed by an '-e-'.

Don't confuse either personal or personnel with personable, an adjective to describe people, meaning 'easy on the eye', 'good-looking'.

Personnel is one of the 117 mis-spellings listed as 'Common difficulties' in the section on 'Spelling' within 'Writing' in UEfAP.