Every year since 1925, except during World War II and in 2020 when the coronavirus pandemic was going strong, the Scripps National Spelling Bee has been held in Washington, D.C. This week, the tradition continues: A bunch of young academics will somehow spell impossibly difficult words, causing breathless, impressed adults to think, “Wow, I am really stupid. Where did I go wrong?”
That got us thinking. What are we generally misspelling in real life? Where are we going wrong in our everyday writing? What words spell trouble for many of us?
We asked a bunch of professionals who work with words every day, and, well: Get ready to feel even dumber.
1. Accommodation
“Accommodation [is] often misspelled as acommodation, accomodation, or acomodation,” said Haley Slade, CEO and founder of Slade Copy House, a digital copywriting agency based in Nashville, Tennessee.
“I work with words literally all day long,” said Slade, who said that “accommodation” is a top offender for most-misspelled word.
Two c’s and two m’s, folks. It shouldn’t be hard with autocorrect and spell check, but apparently, it is.
2. Affect
As noted, most of us have autocorrect and spell check (which kept trying to fix the words in this article we were intentionally misspelling, by the way). So people aren’t misspelling as many words as they used to, but they often misspell words because they don’t understand which words are the correct ones to use.
Lisa Williams is the Charles J. Luellen Professor of English and director of creative writing at Centre College in Danville, Kentucky, and is not related to this author (as far as we know). Williams said that she sees a lot of students using the word “affect” when they mean “effect.”
For instance, these sentences are correct: The storm had quite an effect on the town. It affected all of the citizens.
These sentences are not correct: The storm had quite an affect on the town. It effected all of the citizens.
But, generally, Williams said, due to spell check, she doesn’t see a lot of misspellings from her students.
“It’s a very different world from when I was in school, and the act of reading and memorizing vocabulary lists to learn spelling was just what you did,” she said.
3. A lot
It’s a lot, not alot, said Gigi Marino, a communications and public relations professional in Winter Park, Florida. She also writes professionally and says she has seen “a lot” written as “alot” a lot. In fact, she has seen “alot” so often that she thinks it will be one day accepted into standard usage. Let’s hope not.
4. And
And? People misspell “and”?
It’s not that dumb, but it’s still pretty dumb. It isn’t like people are writing “andd,” but we still manage to screw up the word pretty often by not actually using it.
“This one is a pet peeve of mine,” said Debra Boggs, founder and CEO of D&S Executive Career Management. A big part of Boggs’ job is reworking and rehauling executive resumes, and she sees many professionals sticking in an ampersand — that is, an “&” — in the middle of resumes and cover letters instead of writing “and.”
“It makes the content look unrefined and casual,” Boggs said, & we think most people will agree with her. “Ampersands are perfect for headlines and titles, but they don’t belong in bullet points or full sentences inside your resume.”
5. Canceled
“As a copy editor, I see many words misspelled. However, the ones that come up consistently are the ones spell check misses because they are technically correct — words like ‘canceled’ and ‘traveled’ often get a double L. For example, ‘cancelled,’ which is the British English spelling of the word,” said Jacob Richey, executive copy editor at Axia Public Relations.
Richey said that the spellings ended up changing when Merriam-Webster founder Noah Webster proposed simplifying some British spellings to make the language easier to learn.
“It was not so advertisers could save money on print ads, a commonly shared falsehood,” Richey said. “And since we consume literature and written content from across the globe, I suspect that we encounter both spellings often, which could understandably make choosing the correct version feel like a guessing game. But for the American English spelling, when dealing with double letters, especially L’s, when in doubt, take it out.”
6. Definitely
Anyone in the annual national spelling bee will get this word right, but plenty of mere mortals definitely don’t, according to Jennifer Smith, associate professor and chair of the English department at North Central College in Naperville, Illinois. She said that many students confuse “definitely” with “defiantly.”
She also sees “definitely” frequently misspelled as “definately” and “definatly.”
“The placement of the ‘I’ and ‘a’ in the word can be confusing, leading to incorrect spelling,” Slade said.
There are invariably a million ways people can muff this word. Definitely was named the most misspelled word in a OnePoll.com survey years ago.
7. It’s/its
Knowing when to spell “it’s” or “its” is many spellers’ downfall. Still, while it’s confusing, the virtue of learning how to get these two words right is its own reward.
“The most common misspelling I see is ‘it’s,’ or depending on your point of view, ‘its,’ and the reason is simple: It’s irregular,” said Lenny Cassuto, an English professor at Fordham University in New York City.
“Students are taught that a possessive ends with an apostrophe followed by an s,” Cassuto explained. “But the ‘it’s/its’ pairing violates the rule.”
If your head is now spinning, Cassuto calls it a “forgivable mistake,” though he says that we should still learn exceptions to grammar rules.
8. High school
Not “highschool.” Marino said she sees this a lot, too. Really? The spelling is right there on the sign over the entrance of the school building we all went to — for four years!
9. Lead
Often, people use this word when they want to use “led,” Boggs said.
“I’m not sure where this comes from, but many people think that ‘lead’ is past tense of the verb ‘to lead’ when it should in fact be ‘led.’ This causes confusion in a sentence when all other verbs are correctly spelled in past tense.”
10. Misspell
Slade sees this a lot. People forget that there are two s’s.
“I have noticed over the years that people are becoming more illiterate. Just read any social media site.”
- Gigi Marino, communications and public relations professional
11. Multimillion-dollar
“This is a mistake I see in almost every executive resume. Putting hyphens where they don’t belong is common, and this example is the most prevalent,” Boggs said.
So what are people writing down?
“Multi-million-dollar” and “multi-million dollar,” according to Boggs. Again, multimillion-dollar is correct — no matter how weird it looks.
12. Premier
“Premier” is the correct spelling for “top of the line,” not “premiere” (a first performance of something).
“I have noticed over the years that people are becoming more illiterate,” Marino said. “Just read any social media site ― oh, site and cite are commonly confused ― like Nextdoor, and you will see how atrocious the spelling is.”
13. Restaurant
It’s such a common word, one that spelling bee kids would probably never trip over. But grown-ups do, perhaps due to carelessness.
“Commonly misspelled as ‘restaraunt’ or ‘resturant.’ The placement of the ‘u’ and ‘a’ in the word is often mistakenly switched,” Slade said.
14. Separate
“Separate is often misspelled as ‘seperate’ because of the placement of the ‘a’ and ‘e’ in the word is often interchanged or confused,” Slade said.
15. Spelled
Google Trends recently revealed that one of the words we’re most unsure about spelling in 2023 is, interestingly enough, “spelled.” A lot of people are typing into the search engine, “Is it spelled or spelt?”
So which is right?
Well, that depends. If you live in America, you would go with “spelled.” If you live in England, you would probably use the word “spelt,” which is the past tense of “spell” there.
16. Theater, gray, jeez and blond
Speaking of Google, the search giant said other top spelling searches so far this year include “is it grey or gray?” (gray, but the dog breed is greyhound), “is it theatre or theater?” (the Associated Press Stylebook recommends using theater unless “theatre” is in the proper name of a place), “is it jeez or geez?” (geez is a less common spelling of jeez, which is short for Jesus) and “is it blond or blonde?” (blond is preferred as an adjective, and beyond that, it’s complicated).
17. There, they’re and their
Stuart Patterson, associate professor in the Shimer Great Books School at North Central College, who teaches courses like, “Why – and What – Should We Read?” and “Theories of Metaphor,” said that he constantly sees students messing up “their, there and they’re.”
He does defend his students and any adult who is feeling bad about their spelling. “Spelling itself is a relatively recent invention,” he pointed out.
In fact, when it comes to spelling words correctly, if you consider yourself a poor speller, you are in pretty good company. When it comes to consistently spelling words correctly, Patterson said, “Shakespeare could hardly have done it to save his life.”