Chapter 3

Why People Misspell Words

“Why do people misspell words? Duh—because they don’t know how to spell them,” you mutter. Ah, but it’s not quite so simple. When it comes to our children misspelling words, it’s usually not their fault because they were taught idiotic methods of spelling, the worst being invented spelling. But everyone gets hammered by sensational spelling, deliberately misspelled trademarked words used in product placement. There are other reasons as well.

Many people misspell words because they write them so fast that they forget a letter or two. Often, they don’t have the time to proofread. Then there are times that people do indeed spell the word correctly—but it’s the wrong word in context. Other times, people mispronounce the words and thus misspell them. In this chapter, find out why you spell words incorrectly—so you can learn some easy ways to spell them correctly.

Invented Spelling: A Storee for U

Little Taylor Smyth-Framingham-Schwartz writes her first-grade story as follows: “HGnsk psky skuyq cl. SPhjk Wnnys plu IIkl.”

“Read your story to me,” said her teacher.

The tyke “reads” her story as follows: “Once upon a time, a beautiful princess who happened to be an oral surgeon met a terrible monster, but the monster wasn’t so terrible after all—he was just in pain from an impacted wisdom tooth. After Dr. Beautiful Princess extracted the monster’s tooth, he felt fine and dandy. He went to dental school, graduated at the top of his class, and joined the princess’s dental practice. They lived happily every after.”

“Excellent story, little Taylor Smyth-Framingham-Schwartz. You spelled the words beautifully,” said the teacher.

I’m not making this up. Well, I am, but this story is based on truth: Little Taylor is being taught “invented spelling,” a process whereby children invent spellings for words by arranging letters as they like. Children use their best judgments about spelling, “using whatever knowledge of sounds or visual patterns the writer has” (Bank Street College, 1997). Invented spelling is similar to new theories about potty training: apparently this is such a difficult skill that we wait until children are “ready.” So what if a generation ago children were fully ready and potty trained by age two and now they’re closer to age five? Who are we to tamper with nature?

Tamper away. In the past, spelling was usually taught as a separate subject, through memorization. As a result, people learned to spell. Fortunately, some elementary schools still use spelling books and treat spelling as a subject separate from the other language arts. However, far too many schools let children create their own language. How can you blame people for not being able to spell if they were never taught?

Sensational Spelling

Sensational spelling is intentionally misspelling a word to create a special effect, most often in advertising. Here are some examples:

Sensational Spelling	Correct Spelling
Crème	cream
Froot Loops	Fruit loops
Magick	magic
Krispy	crispy

Sensational spelling isn’t as egregious as invented spelling, but it’s evil in its own way because it plays with our heads. As someone who has been grading poor spelling for far too long, I’m familiar with the English teacher’s version of the Stockholm syndrome: look at a misspelled word long enough and it starts to look correct. It isn’t correct, but try telling that to your brain after a decade of reading it misspelled. Sensational spelling is especially common with brand names, so buyer beware.

Winnie the Pooh

Another reason that people misspell words is that they misread them. Try it yourself. Read the following anecdote about Winston Churchill. Then circle the eight misspelled words and complete the list that follows.

In 1946, Winston Churchill travelled to Fulton, Missouri, to deliver a speech and recieve a bust dedicated in his honor. A gorgoeus women approached the wartime Prime Minister of Britian in the isle. She said, “Mr. Churchill, I have few heros, but you are one of them. I have come over a hundred miles this morning for the unvieling of your bust.” Churchill, who was known far and wide for his quick wit, replied, “Madam, I assure you in that regard I would gladly return the favor.”

Answers

Misspelled Word	Corrected Word
recieve	receive
gorgoeus	gorgeous
women	woman
Britian	Britain
isle	aisle
heros	heroes
unvieling	unveiling

Every time you write, run your spell-check and proofread. It’s no guarantee that every word will be correctly spelled, but it will help you catch more spelling errors than not.

Homographs and Homophones

Words are often misspelled because they’re the wrong words for the context, as you learned in this chapter. They’re spelled just fine and dandy ... but they’re still the wrong words. That’s because English has many words that are often confused. A lot. The most common culprits are homographs and homophones.

Homographs are words with the same spelling and pronunciation but different meanings. For example: bear (animal) and bear (to endure).

Homophones are words with the same pronunciation but different spellings and meanings. For example: their, they’re, there.

Which Witch Is Which?

Try it yourself. Circle the correct word in each set of parentheses.

1. What did the grape say when it was stepped on? Nothing—but it let out a little (whine, wine).

2. A baker stopped making donuts after he got tired of the (hole, whole) thing.

3. A cardboard belt would be a (waist, waste) of paper.

4. It was an emotional wedding; even the cake was in (tiers, tears).

5. They tried to save him with an IV but it was all in (vein, vain).

6. Bakers trade bread recipes on a (knead, need)-to-know basis.

7. A hawk sat atop a church waiting to grab the sparrow because the hawk was a bird of (pray, prey).

8. Seven days without a pun makes one (weak, week).

9. The flock of politically ambitious doves decided to stage a (coupe, coup).

Kids were asked to write about the sea:

10. This is a picture of an octopus. It has eight (testicles, tentacles).

11. If you are surrounded by (see, sea), you are an island. If not, you are (incontinent, a continent).

12. I am not going to write about the sea. My baby brother is always screaming, my Dad keeps shouting at my Mom, and my big sister has just got pregnant, so I can’t think about what to (right, write).

Answers: The second word in each pair is correct.

 

The following chart shows some of the most commonly confused words and their definitions.

Word Pair	Meaning
air/err/heir	atmosphere/to make a mistake/inheritor
all together/altogether	all at one time/completely
allowed/aloud	given permission/verbally
are/our	plural of is/belonging to us
ascent/assent	to move up/to agree
bare/bear	plain, undressed/animal, carry
base/bass	bottom part of an object, morally low, plate in baseball/musical instrument, male voice, type of fish
beau/bow	sweetheart/forward end of a ship, to bend from the waist, a device used to propel arrows, loops of ribbon
beat/beet	to defeat/vegetable
berth/birth	sleeping area on a ship/being born
boar/bore	male pig/tiresome person
bridal/bridle	pertaining to the bride/part of a horse’s harness
cell/sell	a small room/to trade
cent/scent	penny/aroma
cheap/cheep	not costly/bird sound
conscience/conscious	moral sense/awake
coup (koop)/coop	overturn, upset/cage or small enclosure
coup (koo)	act of overthrowing a government
also: coupe (kp)	car
dam/damn	barrier/curse
dear/deer	beloved/animal
desert/dessert	arid region/sweet at the end of a meal
died/dyed	passed away/changed color
fair/fare	evenhanded, market, light coloring/ food or drink, cost of transportation
flew/flue	past tense of “to fly”/fireplace exhaust pipe
foreword/forward	preface/onward
gorilla/guerrilla	ape/soldier
glutinous/gluttonous	sticky/eating voraciously
hangar/hanger	an airplane garage/a wire implement for hanging clothing in a closet
it’s/its	contraction for it is/possessive form of it
leach/leech	dissolve/bloodsucking worm
lead/led	metal, to conduct/past tense of “to lead”
main/mane	primary/hair
meat/meet	animal flesh/encounter
peace/piece	not war/segment
plane/plain	airship/not beautiful, obvious
pore/pour	skin opening, to study carefully/dispense from a container
principal/principle	main, head of a school/rule, standard, law, or assumption
read/reed	interpret written words/marsh grass
sea/see	ocean/vision
shear/sheer	cut/total
son/sun	male child/center of our solar system
stationary/stationery	fixed/writing paper
than/then	comparison/at that time
their/they’re/there	possessive pronoun/contraction for they are/place
to/too/two	preposition/also/number
vain/vane/vein	egotistical/a device that shows wind direction/narrow water channel, blood vessel
way/weigh	method/consider, measure
wet/whet	make wet/sharpen
which/witch	that one/female wizard
who’s/whose	contraction of who is/belonging to someone
wood/would	lumber/inclination
your/you’re	possessive pronoun/contraction for you are

You Deserve a Break Today

How’s about a bit more practice? Circle the correct word in each set of parentheses in these jokes.

Joke #1

(To, Too, Two) women (our, are) arguing about (witch, which) dog is smarter. (Their, They’re) both very (vane, vein, vain) about their dogs.

SYLVIA: My dog is so smart, every morning he waits (four, for) the paper boy to come. Then he picks up the newspaper and brings it to me. (Its/It’s) a pleasure.

MYRTLE: Yeah, I (no, know).

SYLVIA: How?

MYRTLE: My dog told me.

Joke #2

It was the day of the big sale. Big ads were the (mane, main) reason for the long line that formed by 8:30 A.M. all the (weigh, way) around the block. A small man tried to push to the front of the line, but no one (aloud, allowed) him to move (foreword, forward).

On the man’s second attempt, he was knocked around a bit and (throne, thrown) to the end of the line again. As he got up the second time, he said, “That does it! If they hit me (won, one) more time, I don’t open the (dam, damn) store!”

Answers: The last word in each pair is correct.

Voice the s between two vowels (amuse, design, prison) except after a (base, parasite). Exceptions include disagree, opposite, analysis.

Words Are Mispronounced

Many words are misspelled because they’re mispronounced. For instance, Oprah Winfrey’s name is misspelled: It was originally Orpah, a biblical character, but relatives mispronounced it. The misspelling stuck. Sadly, we can’t mispronounce words and have our spellings stick. Happily, pronouncing a word correctly can help you spell it correctly.

English has many bizarre pronunciations. For instance, take gh.

Before a vowel, gh becomes g, as in ghost.

Gh can keep the g from softening, as in ghetto.

Gh can be dropped, as in freight.

At the end of a word it can be f, as in cough.

It does so much more too.

With words that start with gn, kn, mn, pt, ps, and tm, pronounce only the second letter.

Here are some of the most often mispronounced and misspelled words in English:

Correct Spelling	Common Misspelling
across	acrossed
affidavit	affidavid
Alzheimer’s disease	old-timer’s disease
Antarctic	Antartic
arctic	artic
athlete	athelete
clothes	cloths, close
duct tape	duck tape
escape	excape
especially	expecially
espresso	expresso
et cetera	excetera
fiscal	fisical
foliage	foilage
height	heighth
interpret	interpretate
jewelry	jewlery
larynx	larins
library	libary
mayonnaise	mannaise
miniature	miniture
nuclear	nucular
nuptial	nuptual
ordnance	ordinance
ostensibly	ostensively
parliament	parlament
perspire	prespire
prerogative	perogative
prescription	perscription
pronunciation	pronounciation
regardless	irregardless
relevant	revelant
sherbet	sherbert
supposedly	supposably

Cut to the Chase

People don’t misspell words because they’re stupid. People do misspell words because they’re the victims of educational fraud, because advertisers play with our heads, and because people often write so fast that they leave out letters. English also has many words that are easily confused. Mispronouncing words makes it difficult to spell them correctly too.