It has been suggested that Misspelling generator be merged into this article or section. (Discuss)

Misspelling of Occasion (Occassion) and Confectionery (Confectionary) on a shop front

A misspelling of purchased on a service station sign

Misspelling is spelling a word incorrectly. Misspelling is distinguished from other errors in writing, such as grammatical errors, incorrect capitalization or misuse of punctuation. A misspelled word can be a series of letters that represents no correctly spelled word of the same language at all (such as "liek" for "like") or a correct spelling of another word (such as writing "here" when one means "hear", or "now" when one means "know"). Misspellings of the latter type can easily make their way into printed material because they are not caught by simple computerized spell checkers. Download high resolution version (500x691, 108 KB)Misspelt sign at a garage at Bagstone, north of Bristol, England. ... Download high resolution version (500x691, 108 KB)Misspelt sign at a garage at Bagstone, north of Bristol, England. ... Proper spelling is the writing of a word or words with all necessary letters and diacritics present in an accepted standard order. ... Illustration of a scribe writing Writing, in its most common sense, is the preservation of and the preserved text on a medium, with the use of signs or symbols. ... Capitalization (or capitalisation) is writing a word with its first letter as a majuscule (upper case letter) and the remaining letters in minuscules (lower case letters), in those writing systems which have a case distinction. ... The term punctuation has two different linguistic meanings: in general, the act and the effect of punctuating, i. ... In computing terms, a spelling checker (also spell checker) is a software program designed to verify the spelling of words in a file, helping a user ensure his/her spelling is correct. ...

Misspellings may be due to either typos (e.g. typing teh for the), or lack of knowledge of the correct spelling. Whether or not a word is misspelled may depend on context. For example, in British English center would be a misspelling of centre, whereas in American English the opposite is true. Misspelling can also be a matter of opinion when variant spellings are accepted by some and not by others. For example "miniscule" (for "minuscule") is a misspelling to many, and yet it is listed as a legitimate variant in a number of dictionaries. Ironically, the word "misspell" and various forms thereof are often misspelled. A typographical error or typo is a mistake made during the typing process. ... This article is being considered for deletion in accordance with Wikipedias deletion policy. ...

English

Commonly confused words

affect: a verb - e.g. X affects Y
effect: a noun denoting the result of something (the bad weather had an adverse effect on sales), or a verb meaning to bring about or cause to happen (several changes were effected by the new management).

barley: the grain used to make beer /ˈbɑɹli/ (rhymes with "Harley")
barely: hardly /ˈbɛɹli/ (rhymes with "rarely") A rhyme is a repetition of identical or similar terminal sounds in two or more different words (i. ...

bath: noun, contained water for washing or soaking (rhymes with "math")
bathe: verb, to wash in a bath (rhymes with "lathe")

breath: the noun /bɹɛθ/ (rhymes with "death")
breathe: the verb /bɹið/ (rhymes with "seethe")

collage: something made from a variety of magazine cut-outs mounted on paper /kəˈlɑʒ/ (rhymes with "montage")
college: a type of educational institution /ˈkɒlɪdʒ/ (rhymes with "knowledge")

corpse: dead body /kɔɹps/ (rhymes with "warps")
corps: army or similar organization /kɔɹ/ (rhymes with "four"); also the plural of "corp" when it's short for "corporation"

coup: act of overthrowing a government /ku/ (rhymes with "too")
coupe: vehicle /kup/ (rhymes with "group" in U.S. English. Elsewhere, however, the word is in fact French, and has an accented 'e' - coupé, /kupˈeɪ/ (pronounced "koop-ay.")) For other uses, see American English (disambiguation). ... A diacritical mark or diacritic, also called an accent mark, is a small sign added to a letter to alter pronunciation or to distinguish between similar words. ...

everyday: routine, commonplace /ˈevɹideɪ/ ; often used instead of:
every day: daily, once per day /ˈevɹi ˈdeɪ/

fair: evenhandedness; a market or gathering; light in hair or skin; etc /fɛɹ/
fare: food or drink as part of a diet; a transportation charge (e.g., "At the movies, we had the typical fare: popcorn, candy, and cola") /fɛɹ/

A misspelling in a notice in the Tower of London. The Spanish word "guide" bears a grave accent on the "i". The grave accent does not exist in Spanish. It should be, instead, an acute accent.

its: possessive form of the word "it" (e.g., "Its quality is unsurpassed") /ɪts/
it's: contraction of the phrase, "it is" (e.g., "It's getting dark out") or "it has" (e.g., "It's been a while") /ɪts/ Image File history File links Metadata Size of this preview: 800 × 600 pixelsFull resolution (2816 × 2112 pixel, file size: 1. ... Image File history File links Metadata Size of this preview: 800 × 600 pixelsFull resolution (2816 × 2112 pixel, file size: 1. ... Her Majestys Royal Palace and Fortress The Tower of London, more commonly known as the Tower of London (and historically simply as The Tower), is a historic monument in central London, England on the north bank of the River Thames. ... This article is about the international language known as Spanish. ... A Tour Guide is an occupation or vocation of someone who conducts tours usually within the tourism industry. ... The grave accent ( ` ) is a diacritic mark used in written Greek until 1982 (polytonic orthography), French, Catalan, Welsh, Italian, Vietnamese, Scottish Gaelic, Norwegian, Portuguese and other languages. ... Look up I, i in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... The grave accent ( ` ) is a diacritic mark used in written Greek until 1982 (polytonic orthography), French, Catalan, Welsh, Italian, Vietnamese, Scottish Gaelic, Norwegian, Portuguese and other languages. ... The acute accent (   ) is a diacritic mark used in many modern written languages with alphabets based on the Latin and Greek scripts. ...

loose: opposite of tight (rhymes with "goose") /lus/
lose: opposite of win, gain or find (rhymes with "choose") /luz/

now: at the present time /naʊ/ (rhymes with "how")
know: be familiar with the facts; be acquainted with; be aware /noʊ/ (rhymes with "go")

of: belonging to or somehow connected with; associated with; forming a part of; a certain amount of /ʌv/ (rhymes with "love") (unstressed /əv/)
off: opposite of on /ɒf/ (rhymes with "cough")
've: This is the word "have" as part of a contraction. This sounds like "of" after some words like "could" and "might", but is actually a contraction for "have" (could have, might have). You write: should've, might've, would've, etc. /əv/

physics: the laws that govern objects moving in space; related to physical, physiology, physicist, physician /ˈfɪzɪks/ (the first syllable sounds like "fizz")
psychic: having ESP; pertaining to the soul; related to psychology, psychiatrist, psyche, psycho, psychedelic, psychopath, psyched (psychic scars) /ˈsaɪkɪk/ (the first syllable sounds like "sigh")

pore: to study carefully or intently; a small opening in the skin (e.g., "He spent the evening poring over his Chemistry textbook") /pɔɹ/
pour: to angle a receptacle filled with something such that whatever is in the receptacle falls out /pɔɹ/

principle: a rule, standard, law, or assumption /ˈpɹɪnsɪpl̩/
principal: the head of an elementary or high school /ˈpɹɪnsɪpl̩/

quite: rather, to an impressive degree /kwaɪt/(rhymes with "night")
quiet: not very loud; to hush /ˈkwaɪ.ɪt/ (rhymes with "riot")

stationary: adjective meaning "not going forth" or "staying in one place"
stationery: noun meaning papers for corresponding such as letterhead and envelopes

than: conjunction to introduce second member of comparison /ðæn/ (unstressed /ðən/)
then: at that time, after that, etc. /ðɛn/

their: possessive pronoun (They will pack their belongings)
there: adverb describing a relatively far location (Can you see the horned toad over there?)
they're: contraction of the words "they" and "are" (They're doing great!)

thought: the simple past tense of the verb think or the noun meaning an instance of thinking
taught: the simple past tense of the verb teach
taut: the adjective meaning tight

through: from one end to the other; finished /θɹu/ (rhymes with "too")
thorough: complete, exhaustive /ˈθʌɹoʊ/, /ˈθɝoʊ/(rhymes with "burro")

wail: a loud cry
wale: narrow knapped row of fabric, as in corduroy
whale: large marine mammal

were: past tense of the verb to be (I was, you were) /wɝ/(rhymes with "fur")
where: at what place? /wɛɹ/, /ʍɛɹ/ (rhymes with "share")
wear: have clothes on; break something down eventually through use (wear out, wear thin, wear and tear) /wɛɹ/ (rhymes with "share")

whet: to sharpen or hone /wɛt/, /ʍɛt/ (e.g., "Whet your appetite")
wet: saturated with moisture or water /wɛt/

which: what one; that (He kicked against my leg, which bothered me) -- a question word like what, when, where or why, it should begin with WH (homophonous with "witch" in some dialects, but in others it begins with a /ʍ/ sound, as do "whale", "where", "white", and "wheat") /wɪtʃ/, /ʍɪtʃ/
witch: a user of supernatural or magic powers (always pronounced with a simple /w/ sound at the beginning) /wɪtʃ/ Homonyms (in Greek homoios = identical and onoma = name) are words which have the same form (orthographic/phonetic) but unrelated meaning. ... A dialect (from the Greek word διάλεκτος, dialektos) is a variety of a language characteristic of a particular group of the languages speakers. ...

you're: you are
your: belonging to you

who's: contraction of "who is"
whose: belonging to someone

List of notable misspellings

• Antawn Jamison - NBA athlete. Name spelled "An-tawn" but pronounced "An-twan". His parents in fact intended his name to be "Antwan", but his birth certificate came back misspelled. They chose to keep the misspelling.
• Cleveland, Ohio - The leader of the crew that surveyed the town's territory was Gen. Moses Cleaveland, and the region was named in his honor; reportedly the town's first newspaper could not fit the town's name in its masthead without removing the first "a" from the name.
• Cocoa - from cacao (misspelling also influenced by cocoa). Many foreign languages and foreigners speaking English still use "cacao".
• Camel-and-needle-eye proverb - Translators from Hebrew into Greek may have confused kamêlos (cable) with kamilos (camel).
• Google - accidental misspelling of googol. According to Google's vice president, as quoted on a BBC The Money Programme documentary, January 2006, the founders - noted for their poor spelling - registered Google as a trademark and web address before someone pointed out that it was not correct.
• Hoodlum - first appeared as a pseudonym in a newspaper article, whose editor had misread "Noodlum" (the author's reversal of this wrongdoer's real surname, Muldoon). [This popular account of the derivation is discredited by many sources.]
• Middlesbrough, a town in the north-east of England. It is apocryphally suggested that it is missing a second 'o' due to a clerk typing the town's registration form incorrectly (making the "correct" spelling "Middlesborough").
• Montezuma - erroneous spelling of the Aztec emperor's name, Moctezuma. The commonly used name is easier to pronounce in English.
• Nome, a town in western Alaska. A British cartographer wrote "Name ?" in a map, as a request to clarify the region's name. The maps' transcribers mistook the side note as the name of the cape adjacent to the region and misinterpreted "name" as "Nome".
• Odelay - title of an album by Beck. He had dictated the title he had chosen to the person writing down the name of his next album, originally to be titled Órale (Mexican Spanish for "wow!"). See also: the Futurama parody
• Oprah Winfrey's name was originally Orpah, after a character in the Bible, but relatives found it too difficult to say.
• Ovaltine, a popular bedtime drink in the UK, came about because someone misspelled the original name Ovomaltine on the trademark documentation.
• Pago Pago, American Samoa - The region's traditional name is "Pango Pango". The first letters United States Navy officers wrote from the island territory to Washington were written in a typewriter whose "N" key was defective.
• Potatoe - famous misspelling of "potato" in a classroom spelling bee hosted by then U.S. vice president, Dan Quayle.
• Quartzsite, a mining town in Arizona, had its name spelled incorrectly. It should be Quartzite, after the mineral.
• United States Declaration of Independence - An extra "t" in the original document forms the line "Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our Brittish brethren"
• William Holman Hunt's middle name was originally "Hobman", which he disliked intensely. He later discovered a clerical error that misspelled his middle name and used that instead.
• Zenith - Arabic zamt was misread; in Latin letters, at the time, the letter i was never dotted, so "m" looked like "ni".

Antawn Cortez Jamison [pronounced an-TWAHN] (born June 12, 1976, in Shreveport, Louisiana) is an American professional basketball player in the National Basketball Association (NBA). ... “NBA” redirects here. ... This article needs additional references or sources to facilitate its verification. ... The City of Cleveland, Ohio was named after Moses Cleaveland, a surveyor of the Connecticut Land Company. ... Cocoa beans in a cacao pod Cocoa is the dried and partially fermented fatty seed of the cacao tree from which chocolate is made. ... Binomial name Theobroma cacao L. Cacao (Theobroma cacao) is a small (4–8 m tall) evergreen tree in the family Sterculiaceae (alternatively Malvaceae), native to tropical Mexico, but now cultivated throughout the tropics. ... Cocoa beans in a cacao pod Cocoa is the dried and partially fermented fatty seed of the cacao tree from which chocolate is made. ... The eye of a needle. ... Google Inc. ... A googol is the large number 10100, that is, the digit 1 followed by one hundred zeros (in decimal representation). ... The British Broadcasting Corporation, which is usually known as the BBC, is the largest broadcasting corporation in the world in terms of audience numbers, employing 26,000 staff in the United Kingdom alone and with a budget of more than GB£4 billion. ... This MONEY PROGRAMME is a scam trying to encourage young scots to pay as little as 300 pounds a fortnight and, they say it is for your pention but it is not. ... This article is about the town in North East England. ... Motto (French) God and my right Anthem No official anthem - the United Kingdom anthem God Save the Queen is commonly used England() – on the European continent() – in the United Kingdom() Capital (and largest city) London (de facto) Official languages English (de facto)1 Unified  -  by Athelstan 927 AD  Area  -  Total... Apocrypha (from the Greek word απόκρυφα meaning those having been hidden away[1]) are texts of uncertain authenticity or writings where the authorship is questioned. ... Montezuma is the name of a mythological deity, as well as the common English spelling of the name of two Aztec emperors. ... It has been suggested that Mexica be merged into this article or section. ... Aerial view of the harbor in Nome Nome is a city located on the southern Seward Peninsula coast of Norton Sound in the Nome Census Area of the U.S. state of Alaska. ... Official language(s) English[1] Spoken language(s) English 85. ... Odelay is the critically acclaimed 1996 forth album by alternative rock artist Beck. ... This article contains a trivia section. ... Órale is a Mexican slang term. ... Futurama is an Emmy Award-winning animated American sitcom created by creator of The Simpsons Matt Groening and developed by Groening and David X. Cohen for the Fox network. ... Oprah Winfrey, (born January 29, 1954) is a multiple-Emmy Award winning host of The Oprah Winfrey Show, the highest rated talk show in television history. ... Orpah is a woman mentioned in the Hebrew Bible. ... This Gutenberg Bible is displayed by the United States Library. ... Ovaltine (registered trademark of Associated British Foods) is a brand of milk flavoring product made with sugar (except in Switzerland), malt extract, cocoa, and whey. ... Pago Pago, pronounced PAHNG-oh PAHNG-oh, is the capital of American Samoa, a territory of the United States of America. ... Potatoe is an archaic spelling of the word potato as a variant form, with the most recent usage cited from 1880: She found the parson in his garden. ... Binomial name Solanum tuberosum L. The potato (Solanum tuberosum) is a perennial plant of the Solanaceae, or nightshade, family, commonly grown for its starchy tuber. ... For other uses, see Spelling bee (disambiguation). ... James Danforth Dan Quayle (born February 4, 1947) was the 44th Vice President of the United States under George H. W. Bush (1989-1993). ... Quartzsite is a town located in La Paz County, Arizona. ... Quartzite Quartzite is a hard, metamorphic rock which was originally sandstone. ... The United States Declaration of Independence was an act of the Second Continental Congress, adopted on July 4, 1776, which declared that the Thirteen Colonies were independent of the Kingdom of Great Britain. ... William Holman Hunt - Self-Portrait. ... In broad terms, the zenith is the direction pointing directly above a particular location (perpendicular, orthogonal). ...

See also

Main article: Spelling

• Wikipedia:Lists of common misspellings
• List of commonly confused homonyms
• List of English words with frequent misuse
• Misspelling generator
• Orthography
• Spelling reform
• Spelling test

Proper spelling is the writing of a word or words with all necessary letters and diacritics present in an accepted standard order. ... Note: correctly, a pair of homonyms are two words pronounced and spelled identically but differ in meaning, a pair of homophones are pronounced identically but differ in meaning and a pair of homographs are spelled identically but differ in meaning. ... The meanings of words in the English language often change over time. ... Please wikify (format) this article or section as suggested in the Guide to layout and the Manual of Style. ... The orthography of a language specifies the correct way of writing in that language. ... Spelling reform generally attempts to introduce a logical structure connecting the spelling and pronunciation of words. ... A spelling test is an assessment of a persons (usually a students) ability to spell words correctly. ...

External links

Look up Misspelling in
Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

• Miss Spelling's Spelling Center - Most often misspelled words and help with spelling them.
• Correcting Misspellings - How to help students correct misspellings
• Spelling Therapy - an attempt to diagnose common symptoms of frequently misspelled words.
• Typofix - directory of misspellings for common and popular topics.
• Misspellilizer - Takes a sentence and misspells all the words, but the sentence should still be readable.
• Online Spell Check - Corrects misspelled texts
• The Problems of English spelling system - Why many English words are not pronounced as they are written?
• Mispeller.com Misspelled Domain Names - Statistical data on popular domain names and common misspellings.
• Dumbtionary.com - Dictionary of misspelled words.