Spelling Mistakes on the Web by Vivian Cook

Correct spelling	Other spelling(s)	Percentage Wrong
minuscule	miniscule (Oxford English Dictionary labels it erroneous: Merriam-Webster as a variant)	36%
supersede	supercede, superceed	20.2
accommodation	accomodation, acommodation acomodation	19.7
ecstasy	exstacy ecstacy	12.9
embarrass	embaras embarass	12.2
receive	recieve	11.2
desiccate	desicate, dessicate, dessiccate	10.6
definitely	definately difinately	10.4
pronunciation	pronounciation	10.2
separate	seperate	9.7
necessary	neccesary necesary neccesary	9.1
address	adress adres	6.5
cemetery	cemetary semetary (but Stephen King film Pet Semetary and SEMETERY Records)	6.3
occurrence	occurence occurence	6.1
independent	independant	5.7
questionnaire	questionaire	4.8
liaison	liaision liason	4.7
useful	usefull	4.3
beginning	begining	1.6
parallel	paralel paralell parrallel parralell parrallell	1.5
To obtain information on web mistakes, type a word into a search engine such as Yahoo or Google and see how many web pages are found, usually numbered in hundreds of thousands. Then type the word in with typical wrong spellings to see how often they are used. The snags are: the spelling may be the same as a correct word in another language - some of the pages may not be in English. the word may be a proper name; for example 'hight' (12.7%) is mostly a proper name 'Hight', not a misspelling of 'height'. the spelling may vary from one country to another, i.e. British style spelling tends to use 'centre', US style spelling 'center', though the 'British' 'center' is increasingly used in the USA.
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Spelling Mistakes on the Web	Writing System Topics Home Vivian Cook Spelling Data Home Spelling tests
Though people who write web pages can easily check what they write with spell-checkers, they still make many mistakes. Here are some of the words that are spelled wrong most often: