What is the difference between "can not" and "

I'm pretty positive both forms are acceptable.
Then, is using "can not" and "cannot" completely based on personal preference?

Which one is more common in the US and which one is more common in the UK?

My question was <What's the difference between "can not" and "cannot"?> It has been cut off.

imo:

can not - more emphatic, stresses the inability to do something, contrasting it with the ability to do soemthing
cannot - neutral or formal
can't - everyday version

Do you know what the word "dictionary" means? If you don't, you could look it up in a... Here you find nothing but "renegates" concocting their own grammar.

If you are supposed to be "super" Korean, Korea isn't rated very high.

Quick question: "can not" is /k@(n)"nAt/ and "cannot" is /"k{nAt/, right? I'm asking because Merriam-Webster lists both pronunciations for "cannot": http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/cannot

They are basically the same thing, but "cannot" follows the pronunciation pattern pretty closely -- it really becomes one word -- the opposite of can. Whether you stress the first or second syllable depends on how the rest of the sentence plays out; people may use both in the course of a few sentences.

There are also times when it is not meant to be one word, when the "not" is more semantically linked to another word than to "can", and you are not simply negating "can": "You can choose to play along with his game, or you can not choose to play along with his game."

Here, "not" is really linked to "choose", and your options are choosing or not choosing; you still CAN do either. Another example might be your mother saying, "You can either eat your vegetables and go play, or you can NOT eat your vegetables and go straight to bed, young man!"

I guess the easiest way to determine whether this is a "can not" or a "cannot" situation is this: if you can comfortably substitute "can't", than you know you're dealing with "cannot".

But if you can separate the words "can" and "not" and come up with a different variation that still means the same thing, like "...or you can choose not to play his game", or even "...or you can choose to not play his game" (where "not" gets linked more with "play"), then you know that can and not are really supposed to be two separate words.

Makes sense to me. I hadn't thought of something like the examples you gave. That's why I thought the difference was only pronunciation-wise.

No, there's more to it. And I wish there was a simpler way to explain the difference, but even pronunciation isn't a great clue. Even with "cannot", you might say "CANnot" in one instance and "canNOT" in another. (And for Super Korean, there's no American/British divide at work here.)