Southern Indiana’s Top 10 Most Misspelled Words

Why Spelling Trips Us Up in the Digital Age

If we’re being honest here, spelling has become a bit of a lost art. Thanks to our computers, phones, and tablets, we’ve had a digital safety net for over 50 years - ever since the first spell checker came along in 1971. Now, we don’t even have to fix mistakes ourselves - autocorrect just swoops in and does it for us. The downside? If you’re typing fast and not paying attention, you might never even realize you misspelled a word in the first place.

What Southern Indiana Struggles to Spell Most

Recently, I decided to have a little fun and asked our audience to share the words they always struggle to spell. I’ll admit - I’ve got a few that trip me up every single time, so I was curious to see if anyone else shared my pain. Let’s just say, my list got a lot longer with every single comment that rolled in.

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Here’s a little Indiana trivia for you: The most commonly misspelled word in our state is acknowledge. Yep - who knew?

The Double Letter Dilemma

As I read through the submissions, I noticed a theme: double letters. So many of us get tangled up in figuring out where they belong. Is it two c’s and one s in occasionally, or one c and two s’s? And don’t even get me started on the classic “i before e” rule…that little rhyme has betrayed me more than once.

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10 Words That Even Smart Spellers Miss

Below, I’ve put together a gallery of 10 words that regularly stump even the smartest among us. Some are sneaky because of those pesky double letters, some don’t sound like they look, and others…well, they just like to mess with us.

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And fair warning - don’t get too confident. The more you stare at these words, the more your brain will start whispering, “Wait…is that really how it’s spelled?” You’ve been warned!