America's Most Misspelled Words

It's spelling bee season! The National Spelling Bee is still going on at the time that I write this. But I'm confident that none of the finalists would have trouble with any of the words on this map.

Google Trends measured searches for "how to spell X" -- the X being a mispelled word. It made this map illustrating its findings. You can see a larger version here.

For Massachusetts, the hardest word is Massachusetts. For Arizona and New Hampshire, it's diarrhea. North Carolina struggles with pneumonia. California, Idaho, Indiana, and Connecticut have trouble with desert.

-via Debby Witt


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A friend of mine was the lead on transcribing the Clinton impeachment. It was a British company so that the product would be available over night. Spellcheck had to be beaten into submission.
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Actually I think the issue with "gray" vs "grey" might be less about recent pop culture and is the same reason as "canceled" vs "cancelled". UK vs US spelling. It popped up in my life/work often even before the recent horrible book series.

In my job I handle global content and the UK vs. US spellings often come up as an issue to those not in the know (aside from the obvious color/colour and theater/theatre, etc). I've been in the midst of many discussions about "misspelled content" due to people not being aware that they are looking at Euro English vs. US English. "Cancelled" is always a big one that many people are unaware of, which is why I think it hits so many times on this list. People have a recollection of seeing it both ways (correctly in context) at times.
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People only look up words when they care about getting them right, and almost all these words are difficult to remember. I looked up "boutineer" last week (spellcheck doesn't know the word, Wikipedia gave me boutonnière).

But "gray"? I think that may be just people arguing about "gray" vs. "grey." The 50 Shades book did not help there.
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