National Scrabble Day: The Most Commonly Misspelt Words

Today is National Scrabble Day and as we all know, spelling can be a tricky business, especially with there being many different rules in the English language. Even as adults many of us still silently chant ‘I before E except after C.’

Interested in discovering which words people struggle with the most, TheKnowledgeAcademy took to Ahrefs to determine which words had been spelt wrong most frequently on Google.

At the top of the list of words people most commonly misspelt word is diarrhoea, which is neither fun to experience or spell, according to the whopping 189,000 failed Google searches. The most popular wrong spelling is “diarrea” with 171,000 Google searches in the last month.

Next up on the list was separate. With 91,000 Google searches for “seperate” in the last month, it’s clear to see that many people fall victim to replacing the first a with an e.

Definitely placed sixth on the list of words people have misspelt with over 22,800 failed attempts to spell the word right on Google. “Definatly” trumps the list of incorrect spellings (17,000) followed by “definitley” (5,800).

A popular method taught growing up when spelling ‘conscience’ was “break it down to con and science” yet a whopping 12,500 wrong attempts at spelling it were made. There were three popular variations: “concience” with 7,400 Google searches, followed by “consience” (4,500) and “consciense” (600).

Bureaucracy, which although looks like the hardest word to spell on the list, placed as the 11th  most misspelt word on Google. With 3,900 wrong attempts, The Knowledge Academy can reveal the most popular wrongly spelt variations are “bureacracy” (3,900 Google searches), bureuacracy (50 Google searches), and buraecracy (20 Google searches).

With over 24,000 searches on average every month for “how to spell” it’s clear to see that it’s not a strong point for everyone.

Thanks to https://www.theknowledgeacademy.com/  who commissioned the data.