The Most Misspelled Words

[ulthar]

 I don't know where to start. I misspell stuff all the time.

I think almost everyone has demon words.  One of mine used to be necessary.  I could not spell that for ANYTHING - then one day, I started getting it.

I know a physics professor who runs the planetarium here in town who cannot spell. He often tells of the time he asked his wife how to spell some word and she told him to look it up on the dictionary.  He did.  A week or so later, he asked her again.  She said, "didn't you just look that up last week?"

He said, "Yes.  I don't remember how to spell it, but I do remember that it was on page 1132 of the dictionary."

My beef is not with those who misspell words, but with those who refuse to even try.  When corrected, they offer excuses rather than putting forth the effort to better themselves.

[CheezeFlixz]

Fortunately for me I'm using Firefox and it has a spell check plug-in I use that underlines misspelled words in red as it does in MSWord. For a dyslexic this is a magical tool, as it's simple as a right click to correct, provided I haven't butchered the spelling so bad that even spell check has no idea what I meant.

Oh that's one of my peeve words that even a bad speller can spell but use the wrong word in the wrong place like "ideal and idea" as in "I have an idea." and they type "I have an ideal." it's about as bad as the misuse of "there, they're and their"

[Derf]

For me, as with ulthar, it's not the misspellings themselves that are so terrible; it's the attitude of the speller. My students often just depend on Bill Gates's spelling and grammar checker and never even glance over their essays, even when I have demonstrated how ineffective that approach is. Yes, spellcheck is a wonderful tool, but it cannot tell if you are using the right word. And the Office grammar checker would be laughable if it weren't so completely incompetent. I know some of my friends have told me they don't want to write to me because they think I'll grade their letter/e-mail. I honestly don't. The English language is my strong suit. I have my own set of weaknesses in other subjects and hope that when I make an honest effort to understand something that doesn't fall into my area of expertise, the experts will cut me some slack. In return, I try not to measure a person's competence/intelligence by their spelling and grammar skills. The peeves I mentioned earlier mostly bug me when they appear somewhere in a publication that should have been better edited. In an informal setting like this forum, I couldn't care less if someone misspells a word, as long as what he or she is saying makes sense.

[Poogie]

My spelling problem gets worse as I get older. And asking me to look it up in the dictionary sometimes isn't any help, because, "I don't know how to spell it". Plus typing  causes little boo - boos on the way. As long as I can understand what someone is writing misspelled or not it doesn't bother me. If it did I wouldn't write anything at all or read anything at all. Now I'm going to use spell check and see how many misstakes I've made. 

Unbelievably noooooooooooooo  boo-boos.   

[raj]

I've got dictionary.com in my toolbar on Firefox -- Even when I'm just typing in this Forum I wind up checking to see how to spell a word.

[CheezeFlixz]

Now I'm going to use spell check and see how many misstakes I've made. 

Unbelievably noooooooooooooo  boo-boos.   

Just to be a pain in the behind ... (I'm good at that)

'Mistakes' as one "S"
and 'No' has one "O"


 

[BTM]

How about you?
What word or words do you see misspelled almost every time?
What words do you personally have trouble with?

You know, believe it or not, I actually keep a LIST of words I've misspelled.  Not just once or twice, but words I'd try over and over to spell right and just couldn't figure it out, have to use the spell checker and I go, "Okay, that goes on the list."

Then I occasionally look at the list, practice the words in question and sometimes delete or add words when I feel I've mastered (or, in the case of new words failed) them.

(Does some digging with the file searcher)

Ahh, found it! Neatly enough, I believe a lot of these are on the Commonly Misspelled Words list, so I don't feel too bad.

One thing I do know is I have trouble with the "-êbl" problem.. that how some words end with -ible, sometimes -able (like acceptable).

My Commonly Misspelled Words!

analytical 

auxiliary (keep thinking it's two "l"s)

*availability (not sure why I starred some of these, guess it because I'm REALLY having trouble with them, with with one I probably keep wanting to end it wrong.)

claustrophobic

embarrassed

*fluctuating

igniter

*inadvertently Oh, I know this one.. keep wanting to end it with an "antly"

Incapacitated - ha, this is one of those fun "fifty-cent" words :)

Inexplicability (ha, even Firefox says I spelled this wrong, but I didn't!)

miraculously

phenomenon keep thinking there's an "a" in there somewhere

premiere the damn "i" throws me

*presence keep wanting to put a "c" in there after the "s".

Principal  I don't confuse this with principle, but I keep wanting to pronounce it "Princ ca pal" and put in a second a

*recipe - keep wanting to put an extra "e" after the I

rhyme 

*sandwich Dammit, it should be "sandwhich" but it's not!

*scenario - this time I want to replace the a with an e

similar - keep adding an extra "i" after the "l"

souvenirs

spectacular - keep wanting to pronounce it spectaclur

Ventriloquist

verifying


Damn!  As I was writing this, I keep misspelling "pronounce" (keep leaving out the second "n".  Guess I need to add that to the list!

[PSlugworth]

"Rediculous," "alright" and "teh" are the ones that get me the most.  It's like, I can at least understand the first two since not everyone's a great speller (but still, you'd think you'd pick up on these things after a while), but "teh" just floors me.  People don't have enough patience these days to correct their typos before they move on to the next word, I guess.

Now watch, I've probably overlooked some obvious typo in my own post up there...

[Poogie]

Now I'm going to use spell check and see how many misstakes I've made. 

Unbelievably noooooooooooooo  boo-boos.   

Just to be a pain in the behind ... (I'm good at that)

'Mistakes' as one "S"
and 'No' has one "O"


 

  LMAO   That's a good one CheezeFlixz.

[BTM]

definitely
experiment
and oddly, villain

Let me guess, on villain, you want to switch the a and i and spell it villian?  :)

And I'm also guessing you want to put an "a" somewhere in definitely? That's how I'd misspell it...

[BTM]

You know, this isn't really spelling, but to me, it bugs me when people use double negatives. 

Like when they say, "I don't have no..."  or (even worse) "I ain't got no..."  or "We don't have no..." whatever.  I always want to say, "Any.  We don't have ANY."  I'm like come on, people, I know you're from Southern Illinois, but you can do better than that! 

 

[BTM]

For me, as with ulthar, it's not the misspellings themselves that are so terrible; it's the attitude of the speller. My students often just depend on Bill Gates's spelling and grammar checker and never even glance over their essays, even when I have demonstrated how ineffective that approach is.

You know, strangely enough, I've always had this weird problem where I'm be typing something and, I suppose, thinking about something else, and then I look back and there are different words typed than what I meant to say.  And the spell checker doesn't catch them because they're not incorrect and (usually) they're okay grammatically.  Good example: Typing "something" for "sometimes" (which, neatly enough, I did while type this, but caught it.)  Often I'll even type several words twice without realizing it.

Dunno, what the deal is, I suppose part of it might because I'm trying trying to type too fast, but part of me can't help but wonder if I have some form of dyslexia they haven't IDed yet....

[Dennis]

I don't mind occasional spelling and grammatical errors in every day usage, nobody's perfect, but some things just drive me crazy. People who change a saying, example "I couldn't care less" has become "I could care less" which means the opposite of what the speaker actually thinks it does. Made up words, irregardless, this is not a word, the word is regardless. People who constantly use the phrase "was like" "were all like" or any of the variations of this.
This can drive me right up the wall, but I hear it so much now that I sometimes find my self saying it. Finally the idea that because the recipeant of the message more or less knows what you meant any spelling or grammatical errors don't count. I have actually called customers to confirm what I think their order or price quote says and been told  "Well, you know what I mean don't you ?" and I respond with "If I did why do you think I called you ?"
I'm not really sure what the cause of this is, could be more dependence on computers and cell phones, or it could be that I'm turning into the old fogey I said I'd never become.

[CheezeFlixz]

You know, this isn't really spelling, but to me, it bugs me when people use double negatives. 

Like when they say, "I don't have no..."  or (even worse) "I ain't got no..."  or "We don't have no..." whatever.  I always want to say, "Any.  We don't have ANY."  I'm like come on, people, I know you're from Southern Illinois, but you can do better than that! 

 

I don't correct folks that say that, I just ask them if they have any 'double negatives.' If they ask what that is I say "Look it up." LOL

Not a misspelling but a peeve is when people use "can" in place of "may" as in "Can I barrow your saw?" I ask  "I don't know 'can' you?" it's 'May I borrow your saw?' I over look in on line, I think I have to hear it to really notice it.

'May' is permission and 'can' is ability.

[Jack]

Any time people use similar sounding words in place of each other.  Especially bad with contractions, like "Your coming to dinner tonight, right?".  I've even seen "throw" replaced with "through".  My old English professor always got a kick out of some girl who once replaced "prima donna" with "pre-madonna".