A misspelling is a spelling of a word that is not the standard one. It either produces a word that does not exist, such as teh for the, or a real word in the wrong place, such as form for from. The most common causes are mispronunciation, typos, homophones, apostrophes, and foreign words.
Some English words have more than one accepted spelling, especially where British and American English differ, which is a topic of its own (see British or American English?). Any spelling that is not considered standard, however, is a misspelling and is marked as wrong.
Two types of misspellings
There are two main types of misspellings, depending on the word they produce. In the first, letters are changed, added, or lost, and the result is a word that does not exist in the language, for example teh instead of the. In the second, the result is a real word that you can find in the dictionary, but it is wrong in its context, for example form instead of from.
The second type is the harder one, because a spell checker that only compares each word with a dictionary does not notice it. The AI Spell Checker reads whole sentences, so it also catches a real word in the wrong place.
Why words get misspelled
Several things can lead to the wrong spelling of a word. Some misspellings come from a simple lack of knowledge, others from the way a word is pronounced in a dialect or region. Typos and slips of the pen also happen, especially to fast writers and typists.
Here are the most common causes. Do your own mistakes fit one of them? Then you know what to work on.
Mispronunciation
Mispronunciation is one of the most common causes of misspelling, if not the most common one. The sounds of a word are often essential to knowing how to spell it. If you mispronounce a word, you are likely to spell it the way you say it, as in Febuary for February or libary for library.
Typos
A misspelling caused by a typo often says nothing about what the writer knows. Typing errors happen most when you type fast. The most common ones are:
- doubled or even tripled letters: weeek
- a single letter where there should be two: betwen
- swapped letters: teh
These typos are far less common in handwritten texts.
Homophones
Homophones are words that sound the same but are spelled differently. As the article on there, their, and they're shows, it is easy to use one of them where another one with the same pronunciation would be correct. Other examples are no and know, or right, rite, and write.
Apostrophes
Using apostrophes correctly is another common source of misspellings. A misplaced apostrophe can be a kind of typo, such as does'nt instead of doesn't, or a mistake in the possessive of a plural: when you mean the titles of several books, write the books' titles, not the book's titles. How to use apostrophes correctly covers the rules.
Foreign words
Some English words are similar in sound, meaning, or even spelling to words in other languages. People who write English as a foreign language may therefore carry the spelling of their own language over to the English word. A well-known example is address: French spells it adresse and German Adresse, both with a single d, so adress is a common mistake.