Common misspelling in English

Common misspellingsHere’s a quick-reference guide to the top misspellings according to the Oxford English Corpus – an electronic collection of over 2 billion words of real English that h

Common misspellings

Here’s a quick-reference guide to the top misspellings according to the Oxford English Corpus – an electronic collection of over 2 billion words of real English that helps us to see how people are using the language and also shows us the mistakes that are most often made

The table gives the correct spelling of the word, handy tips on getting it right, and also the most common misspellings that we’ve found in our research, so you can check to see

if any of the same mistakes have been tripping you up

Correct spelling Spelling advice Common misspelling

accommodate,

accommodation

accomodation

disappear one s, two ps dissapear

pavilion one l pavillion

end

posession

i before e except after c

Most people know the spelling rule about i before e except after c, as in the following

words:

-ie-

The rule only applies when the sound represented is ‘ee’, though It doesn’t apply to

words like science or efficient, in which the –ie- combination does follow the letter c but

isn’t pronounced ‘ee’

There are a few exceptions to the general i before e rule, even when the sound is ‘ee’ Examples include seize,weird, and caffeine There’s nothing for it but to learn how to

spell these words, checking in a dictionary until you are sure about them