It would appear that at one time 'woful' was an acceptable alternative spelling, which has since fallen into disuse.

To further stress the pronunciation of the garment versus the cloth, the garment has an alternative spelling plaide, although rarely used.

In the literacy test, candidates are asked to choose the right answer from four alternative spellings for words such as preference, acknowledge and relieved.

If you mistype a word, it offers alternative spellings to help.

Most variants among the manuscripts are minor, such as alternative spelling, alternative word order, the presence or absence of an optional definite article (the), and so on.