Commonly misspelled English words (UK: misspelt words) are words that are often unintentionally misspelled in general writing. A selected list of common words is presented below, under Documented list of common misspellings. Although the word "common" is subjective depending on the situation, the focus is on general writing, rather than in a specific field. Official spellings also vary by country or region, with some rejecting the American or British variants as incorrect for the region.
Contents
- Unlimited misspellings
- Documented list of common misspellings
- Mispronunciation
- Typing errors
- Homophones
- Personal names
- Foreign writers
- Apostrophes
- References
Within a particular field of study, such as computer graphics, other words might be more common for misspelling, such as "pixel" misspelled as "pixle" (or variants "cesium" and "caesium"). Sometimes words are purposely misspelled, as a form in slang, abbreviations, or in song lyrics, etc.
In general writing, some words are frequently misspelled, such as the incorrect spelling "concensus" for "consensus" found in numerous webpages on the Internet. Other common misspellings include "equiptment" (for "equipment"), "independant" (for "independent"), "readible" (for readable), or "usible" (for usable/useable).
Unlimited misspellings
Because many words can be extended with prefixes (such as "un-" or "anti-" or "re-") or suffixes (such as "-ly" or "-ing" or "-ness"), a comprehensive list of words prone to misspelling would contain thousands of variations from combining prefixes or suffixes (or both) added to the root words. To limit the scope to common words, the top 350 words are considered (according to various sources).
Documented list of common misspellings
The following list, of about 350 words, is based on documented lists of the top 100, 200, or 400 most commonly misspelled words, rather than listing every conceivable misspelled word. Each word is followed by examples of misspellings:
Mispronunciation
Mispronunciation is known to be one of the most common causes of misspelling. Hence, phonetic misspelling is common, once a word is mispronounced; for example, the word "realize" may be misspelled as "relize".
Typing errors
Some spelling errors are introduced because the typing of certain people is not perfect, such as
Some of the errors listed may be due to mistyping rather than ignorance, for example "solider" for "soldier".
These misspellings rarely happen in handwritten text.
Homophones
Two (or more) differently spelt words with different meanings are homophones if they are nonetheless pronounced the same; e.g., right, rite, wright, and write; read (most tenses of verb) and reed; read (past, past participle) and red. This list includes only a few homophones although incorrect use of homophones is a very common error; the following words from the list are all good English words, though often incorrectly used in place of their homophones: advice, affect, artic (colloquial UK usage for "articulated lorry"), aweful, breath, calender, capital, dose, its, lightening, loose, loosing, planing, principal, rime, solider, stoping, they're, wether and you're. Spelling checkers do not detect incorrect use of homophones.
Personal names
Personal names and surnames may be pronounced like a standard English word, but with different spelling: "balance" and "John Ballance"; "war" and "Evelyn Waugh"; "marshal" and "George Marshall". Personal names do of course generally start with a capital letter.
Foreign writers
A misspelling in English might be made by someone used to a different spelling in another language; for example, "address" is translated "adresse" in French and German. Many Spanish words are similar or identical to English words, but with an "n" inserted, or replacing an "m", leading to errors: "inmigrant" from "inmigrante", "cementery" from "cementerio", "confortable". The English word 'loose' reasonably looks like it should be pronounced as 'lose' to Germans, as in German the lone 's' often has the sound of an English 'z', and a lone 'o' in English very seldom has the 'oo' sound.
Apostrophes
There can be confusion over a plural possessive form. If the singular is "book's title" and the plural "books' titles", the latter can appear as "book's", or even "books's". The plural can be written with an erroneous apostrophe ("grocer's apostrophe" in Britain): "apple's and pear's". Elision can lead to misspelling: "doesn't", where the apostrophe represents the elided "o", can be misspelled "does'nt".