English can be a daunting language, especially in terms of spelling. The origins of words, their rules and conventions, and spelling’s evolving nature can leave you confused.

Spelling errors happen all the time. They’re mostly harmless, and can be easily found and corrected. But in the wrong setting, spelling mistakes can be mortifying. In most formal writing, a spelling error will diminish your reader’s confidence in you, and make them wary of anything you write.

Most Misspelled Words

There’s a lot of English words that are regularly misspelled. Some are truly hard to spell due to the odd vowel combinations (looking at you, bureau). But there are also tricky words with silent or double letters.

Here is a list of 100 of the most commonly misspelled words in the English language.

Correct Spellings	Common Spelling Errors
absence	absense, absentse, abcense, absance
acceptable	acceptible
accommodate	accomodate, acommodate
acknowledge	acknowlege, aknowledge
acquaintance	acquaintence, aquaintance
allegiance	allegaince, allegience, alegiance
beautiful	beatiful
believe	beleive
because	becuase
beginning	begining
camouflage	camoflage, camoflague
Caribbean	Carribean
cemetery	cematery, cemetary
changeable	changable
colleague	collaegue, collegue
committed	commited, comitted
concede	conceed
conscious	concious, consious
deceive	decieve
dilemma	dilema
drunkenness	drunkeness
disappoint	dissapoint
embarrass	embarass
exceed	excede
exhilarate	exilerate
existence	existance
experience	experiance
fascinating	fasinating
fluorescent	flourescent
fulfil, fulfill	fullfil
foreign	foriegn
grateful	gratefull, greatful
guarantee	garantee, garentee, garanty
gauge	guage
glamorous	glamourous
government	goverment
guard	gaurd
happened	happend
harass	harrass
humorous	humourous
idiosyncrasy	idiosyncracy
immediately	immediatly
incidentally	incidently
independent	independant
imitate	immitate
indict	indite
indispensable	indispensible
intelligence	inteligence, intelligance
jewelry	jewelery
judgment	judgement
kernel	kernal
knowledge	Knowlege
knickers	nickers
knife	nife
Know	No, Now
liaise	liase
lollipop	lollypop
millennium	millenium
Neanderthal	Neandertal
necessary	neccessary
noticeable	noticable
occasion	ocassion
occurred	occured
occurrence	occurance, occurence
pavilion	pavillion
persistent	persistant
pharaoh	pharoah
piece	peice
politician	politican
Portuguese	Portugese
possession	posession
preferred	prefered
propaganda	propoganda
publicly	publically
really	realy
receive	recieve
referred	refered
religious	religous
remember	rember, remeber
resistance	resistence
sense	sence
separate	seperate
siege	seige
successful	succesful
supersede	supercede
surprise	suprise
tattoo	tatoo
tendency	tendancy
therefore	therefor
threshold	threshhold
tomorrow	tommorow, tommorrow
tongue	tounge
truly	truely
unforeseen	unforseen
unfortunately	unfortunatly
until	untill
weird	wierd
wherever	whereever
which	wich
wholly	wholey

Is it Misspell or Mispell?

It’s ironic that the word “misspell” is one of the most misspelled words in the English language. People often trip over the double s in this word.

Remember, the first s comes from the prefix “mis” which means incorrect, bad, or lacking and the second s comes from its root word “spell.” Put the two together and you get misspell.

This was one of my regular errors a few years back. Reminding myself that the word always comes with a pair of double letters keeps me from making this spelling error again and again.

Why Do We Misspell Words?

I think the reasons so many of us misspell common words is because we often write how we speak. But written English is so much more different from spoken English!

There are numerous cases where accent, geographical location, and upbringing can affect how we talk and write. Consider someone from the United States: Americans often contract the pronunciation of some words.

Let’s use the word “comfortably” as an example. Normally, it’s broken down into four syllables (com-fort-a-bly). When speaking, many people from the US contract this into three syllables instead (comf-ta-bly).

Now most Asian countries pronounce a word how you spell it. If you ask people from both places to spell out the word, there’s obviously going to be some confusion, right?

Correcting Misspelled Words

There’s no need to beat yourself up just because you misspelled a word. It happens to the best of us!

But it pays to always proofread your work after you’re done writing. Not doing so is just sloppy writing.

So make it a habit to read and revise. Great writers don’t become great just by writing, but by editing too!

What word do you often misspell? Share it in the comments below!

 

If you enjoyed this post, then you might also like:

• Spelling Words with Double Consonants
• Open and Closed Compound Words: Common Examples and Rules for Spelling
• American vs. British Spelling: Orthography and Alternate Spellings of Common Words
• How to Spell Better Using the Secrets of Spelling Bee Winners