linguisticsorthographysingle-word-requeststerminology
I frequently encounter "vs" words like:
These words are very similar but not identical in spelling, and have different meanings.
(Since the words are not identical there are not heteronyms)
Is there any term that describes such pairs of words?
Wikipedia suggests the name "SMS Language", but also offers "textese", "texting language", and "chatspeak", among others.
The word you could be looking for is variant
Definition:
1 obsolete : variable
2 : manifesting variety, deviation, or disagreement
3 : varying usually slightly from the standard form
(examples) variant readings; variant spellings
Also, from google search:
Best Answer
The only word to describe what you are asking is paronym.
Bear in mind 'wisdom' is a paronym of 'wise' which differs by more than just one character unlike the examples in your question.
There isn't one word to describe exactly what you have asked but hopefully this answer will suit your needs.
As mentioned by John Lawler in the comments under your question the term is rarely used. In fact it's so rare that the spell-checker software on my Google Chrome web browser doesn't recognise it.
See http://oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/paronym for in-depth details.