Francesca Kennedy Wallbank, who was previously favourite to win the show, was part of the branding team on last night’s episode where they had to create a video game. Francesca was unaware that her branding for the game said, ‘Artic Survivor’ rather than ‘Arctic Survivor’. Though she checked with her two colleagues after clarifying that it was spelled correctly, none of them realised the mistake. If a direct descendant of the poet William Wordsworth can make such seemingly obvious error, it begs the question: what are the most misspelled words and why?
In 2017, Oxford Open Learning Trust conducted a survey of 1,000 adults in the UK about their spelling and the results found that 92 percent of UK adults rely on online spellcheckers, dictionaries and autocorrect to avoid spelling errors.
When also asked about their level of embarrassment surrounding their poor spelling, the majority said they were more embarrassed by errors in formal and work situations such as their CV than on social media.
Despite the level of adults relying on other resources for their spelling, over half of the adults surveyed said they would judge someone on their spelling.
70 percent of HR staff and recruitment said they would do the same even though the majority agreed that spelling is now of less importance.
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Spelling automation tools – such as spellcheck, auto-correct and speech to text – mean that people no longer have to pay attention to spelling.
Therefore the correct spelling does not become learned, and instead the incorrect spelling will continue to be used.
The rise in use and range of emoticons means that people no longer have to express themselves through words. Instead it is easier to add the applicable emotive face or object.
Lack of reading means that the connections between the sounds of words and the way they are written are not learned.
Research shows that learning to spell and learning to read rely on the same underlying knowledge and each strengthens the other.
Memory plays a major part in spelling. A study conducted by John Hopkins University found that stroke victims with long-term memory damage tend to be able to recall a word and its meaning but not how to spell it.
This means that if your spelling is not up to scratch, simple repetitive revision will improve the number of errors you make over time.
A study of 2,000 adults found that 40 percent believed that their spelling errors increased when they stopped physically writing as often as they did before technology advanced.
Use the Oxford Open Learning Trust’s quiz to test your spelling ability on some of the most commonly misspelled words:
