Misspelling Bee: Can You Spell These Commonly Misspelled Words Correctly?
It is often said that English is one of the most difficult languages in the world to learn. Perhaps this is because many of the words are spelled in unusual ways that are not phonetic and do not follow a consistent logic. There are even rules such as, “I before E but never after C”, but even “rules” like these have exceptions. Then there are the words that begin with silent letters and such unusual parings like “ps-”, “ph-” and “xy-”. There are many words that are learned only by repetition and memorization. And consequently, there are words that every anglophone has trouble with. Think you are a perfect speller? Why don’t you try this little quiz of 25 of the most common misspelled words, and see how you phare. 
Now you can from other people’s mispelled eBay auctions by finding the listings with typos that other people miss.
Tags: quiz, quizzes, spelling test
November 25th, 2008 at 11:52 am
How do you refresh the test?
November 29th, 2008 at 10:46 am
“It is often said that English is one of the most difficult languages in the world to learn”.
Ha! That’s a good one. English is one of the easiest languages to learn by far.
Let me make a comparison:
Number of articles:
English– 1 (the)
Spanish– 2 singluar (el, la), 2 plural (los, las), plus neutral (lo)
German — 3 base (der, die, das), that change depending on the time
Times:
English– 1 (indicative)
Spanish– 3 (indicative, imperative and subjuntive)
German– 5 (indicative, accusative, imperative, genitive and dative)
English speaking people don’t even grasp the concept of this “time”. It changes all conjugations for all the verbs. But they wouldn’t know conjugation either, because:
Conjugation:
English– 2 singular (first and third person), 1 plural
Spanish– 3 singular plus the formal, 3 plural. Change of the whole word for each person.
example.
ENGLISH. Verb: to go (indicative)
i, you, we, they – go
he, she – goes
NUMBER OF VARIATIONS> 2
SPANISH. Verb IR
Indicative:
yo – voy
tu- vas
el – va
nosotros – vamos
ellos- van
vosotros – vais
usted (formal) – va
Imperative
tu – ve
Subjuntive
yo – vaya
tu – vayas
el – vaya
nosotros – vayamos
ellos – vayan
vosotros – vayais
usted – vaya
NUMBER OF VARIATIONS> 15
December 26th, 2008 at 10:43 am
Because I’m a Brit, I got one wrong. Judgement is the correct spelling in this country. I don’t think it’s fair that words which have different spellings in different parts of the world are included on the quiz!
December 26th, 2008 at 3:17 pm
Something to consider about the test.
It says the proper spelling is Judgment, which is correct, but using Judgement is also acceptable in the dictionary.
I’d link to dictionary.com, but its kind of easy to find and I am not sure how this blog post will react to linking.
December 26th, 2008 at 4:34 pm
for some misspellings, people will find them more because the misspelling is so common. it’s not just on ebay but on other websites as well for SEO purposes… e.g. something like stationery – more people probably search google for “stationary” than the proper spelling.
December 26th, 2008 at 4:35 pm
oh, and also “judgement” is not really any more incorrect than spelling “gray” as “grey.”
December 26th, 2008 at 4:38 pm
oh, and also, “judgement” is no more incorrect than spelling “gray” as “grey” so perhaps this should explain that it wants american english and not british (which coincidentally seems backwards since most who learn english as a second language learn the british)
December 28th, 2008 at 5:12 pm
Judgment is the standard variant in Standard American English for the lexeme which sees judgement to be the standard variant in British, New Zealand and Australian English.
Neither is incorrect.
January 1st, 2009 at 9:30 am
Sorry, your quiz is wrong. Judgement is what one has (or lacks) and a judgment is what a court gives.
April 22nd, 2009 at 7:46 pm
I don`t know where you get your information from. English is supposed to be one of the easiest languages in the world. My native language is Spanish and I have learned English, French, and Dutch. I personally believe English was the easiest one.
May 5th, 2009 at 1:51 pm
god there are some thick bastards in the world.
May 24th, 2009 at 12:30 am
Its really interesting to know.
July 24th, 2009 at 8:19 am
Actually it is judgment for American English, and judgement for British English, although its more and more written as judgment in Britain, judgement is still more correct.
November 23rd, 2009 at 4:41 am
Well this test would have some logic to it if it used the CORRECT English and not the Americanised version. The correct ENGLISH spelling is Judgement not Judgment. Just because the US bastardised the English language does not make your quiz correct. If you want to make your quiz correct either use proper English or state that you are using US English of which there are many differences. For example; colour – color, neighbour – neighbor, colourised – colorized.
Both versions of each word are technically correct now according to most dictionaries dependent on where you were educated. I live in Australia and we use British English.
However, the various eBay tools that use spelling errors are great. I’ve found real bargains that way.