Enriching Education: Most Commonly Misspelled Words in the US

 

Tom O'Rourke Unsubscribe	Thu, Oct 27, 4:11 AM (1 day ago)
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Do you find yourself struggling to spell definitely, zucchini, or nauseous? Well, you’re not alone.  

 

New data by QuillBot has revealed that thousands of Americans are making spelling mistakes every month. 

 

The team used Google Search data to compare 150 of the most difficult words in American English. They then took the most common misspelling of each word and revealed how many times people were searching for the word incorrectly through Google searches every month in the US. 

 

These are the words with the highest number of results: 

 

Word	Misspelling	Number of misspellings every month in the US
Calendar	Calender	257,000
Arctic	Artic	87,000
Niece	Neice	73,000
Receive	Recieve	62,000
Separate	Seperate	33,000
Rhythm	Rythm	30,000
Believe	Belive	25,000
Connecticut	Conneticut	20,000
Occurred	Occured	18,000
Congratulations	Congradulations	17,000
Until	Untill	16,000
License	Licence	15,000
Broccoli	Brocoli	13,000
Spaghetti	Spagetti	13,000
Siege	Seige	13,000

 

With over a quarter of a million misspellings on Google every month in the US, calendar is by far the most misspelled word. The most common misspelling is using an e instead of an a in the last syllable.  

 

Arctic takes second place, with 87,000 Americans spelling it artic every month in the US.

 

Niece takes third place, with 73,000 misspellings every month. This is because people often get the i and the e confused. Coincidently, receive takes fourth place, with 62,000 misspellings a month in the US for the same reason, whilst believe also has 25,000 misspellings every month.

 

Separate is another word that confuses many Americans, with 33,000 misspellings every month. The common misspelling is seperate with an e in the middle.  

 

Also on the list is congratulations, with 17,000 misspellings every month. Many people think it’s spelled with a d instead of a t.  

 

It appears broccoli and spaghetti are the foods that people struggle to spell the most, with 13,000 misspellings every month in the US.

  

A spokesperson from QuillBot said: “Many Americans struggle with spelling, especially in a digital age of spell checkers. However, if you sometimes get your letters jumbled up, there are things you can do to improve your spelling.  

 

“Reading more frequently can improve your spelling. This is because you get to see the letters on a page in front of you.  

 

“Writing more often can also help with your spelling. Try using a dictionary every time you think you may have spelled a word wrong, and then highlight the word. Slowly you will start to see an improvement in your spelling, especially for the words that we all struggle with.” 

 

The study was conducted by QuillBot, an AI-powered writing platform used to enhance writing and improve vocabulary, tone, and style.   

 

Credit to: https://quillbot.com/grammar-check  

 

Methodology: Data was collected by taking 150 of the most common misspelled words in the US. The misspellings of the words were then put in Ahrefs which revealed how many times a month the incorrect spelling is searched.