You learn to spell difficult words mainly by reading and writing a lot, and by checking what you write with a spell checker and learning from its corrections. Lists of commonly misspelled words help less than you might think, because the real problem is English itself: its spelling often does not follow its pronunciation.
Many people search the web for how to spell difficult words. This means two things. On the one hand, many people have real trouble spelling certain words. On the other hand, many people are trying to help them with a method to improve their spelling. You will find plenty of websites that list the most commonly misspelled words in English, the "most difficult words to spell".
What is the point of these lists? Is anyone going to learn them by heart and improve their spelling that way? Have you ever "learned to spell" a word like that?
What is the problem: schools or the language?
Look at a typical list, such as YourDictionary's list of the 100 most misspelled words in English. It includes words like acceptable, accidentally, believe, calendar, category, embarrass, foreign, grateful, guarantee, humorous, intelligence, judgment, leisure, maintenance, neighbor, occurrence, pronunciation, referred, schedule, threshold, until, and weather.
These are quite common words. If they really are the words people misspell most, then something is seriously wrong, either with the education system or with the language itself. Most people read and write every day, on screens and on paper, and handle far harder tasks than spelling category. So schools cannot be that bad. That leaves the second answer: the language is the problem, or more precisely, the spelling of English.
Chaotic, complex English
In many languages, spelling follows pronunciation much more closely: you write what you hear. If you hear casa (house) in Spanish, you know it is written casa. If you hear bambino in Italian, you know it is written bambino. If you hear Haus in German, you will write Haus, even if you have never seen the word before.
In English, none of this works as a general rule. In many words, the spelling does not follow the pronunciation. On top of that, there are regional differences. Just think of all the spelling differences between American and British English: what is right in one can be wrong in the other, and Canadian and Australian English have their own preferences. Many other countries use a form of English as an official language as well.
Any examples?
Think of words that end in -er or -re, such as center, fiber, and luster. In the United States, center, fiber, and luster are correct. In British English, and in Canadian English too, they would be marked as errors: there you write centre, fibre, and lustre. As always, there are exceptions. Words that end in -cre, such as mediocre and massacre, keep the -re spelling in American English as well. If you write for a British or an American reader, it helps to keep your spelling consistent.
The main problem, though, remains the gap between spoken and written language, which English shares with French and many other languages. English is spoken in many dialects, some so different in their sounds that even native speakers do not always understand each other easily. Yet the spelling rules assume that a sound is spoken the same way everywhere. Seen this way, learning to write correct English, in whichever regional variety you need, is a heroic task that everyone can be proud of.
Take the "rules" for vowel teams, two letters that together make one sound. The same pair of letters can stand for several different sounds:
| Letters | Sound | Examples |
|---|---|---|
| ea | short e, as in bed | bread, breath, dead, head, lead, read, wealth |
| ea | long e, as in see | bead, beat, eat, heat, lead, meat, read, treat |
| ea | long a, as in day | break, great, steak |
| ew | oo, as in too | blew, chew, crew, flew, grew |
| ew | you | few, pew |
| oo | short oo, as in put | book, foot, good, look, wood |
| oo | long oo, as in too | balloon, boot, goose, moon, noon |
| oo | short u, as in cup | blood, flood |
| oo | or, as in for | door, floor |
| ou | ow, as in cow | bough, house, mouse |
| ou | long o, as in go | though |
| ou | short u, as in cup | enough, rough, tough |
| ow | ow, as in cow | brown, cow, how, now |
| ow | long o, as in go | blow, flow, grow, know |
Lead and read even appear in two rows: how you say them depends on their meaning or their tense.
To use rules like these, you would not only have to learn them by heart. You would also have to know how most words are pronounced, and be able to apply the rules to every word you write, even a word you do not know. Anyone who masters that in a week deserves a celebration. So back to the question: how do you spell difficult words?
10 golden rules to improve your spelling of difficult words
- Read, read, read.
- Watch films with English subtitles, and read the subtitles.
- Read more.
- Write.
- Read and write.
- Watch more films with English subtitles.
- Write a lot.
- Use a spell checker, such as the Spell Checker.
- Study its explanations: each mark tells you why a word or a phrase is wrong.
- Use a second checker: the AI Spell Checker reads whole sentences, so it also catches real words in the wrong place, such as form for from.
That's it. Do this every day, and difficult words will slowly become easy ones. If you want to know which words trip people up most often, see the 289 words most commonly misspelled in English, and for the few rules that do work, read the 4 most helpful spelling rules.