Britain’s Top Ten Online Spelling Errors Revealed

There the troublesome words your most likely to spell incorrectly – now a new study has named Britain’s top ten online spelling mistakes.

Researchers from Motive PR have trawled through social media to come up with a definitive list of the ten most commonly misspelled words.

Millions of Brits take to platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram every day to leave comments or create posts.
But while the art of letter writing may be officially dead it seems most of us are also unable to string a few sentences together on social media without betraying our poor spelling skills.

The researchers found that THEIR was the most commonly misspelled word in Britain with people constantly confusing it with THERE and THEY’RE.

misspelled words

Defined by the dictionary as meaning ‘belonging to or associated with the people of things previously mentioned or easily identified’ THEIR is the possessive pronoun but is often confused with there and vice versa.

The spelling errors study found that a massive 21% of social media spelling mistakes was due to people typing there or even they’re when they actually meant THEIR.

Despite having the same sound THERE has a very different meaning – defined as ‘in, at, or to that place or position’.

The next most common spelling error found by the researchers was YOU’RE which was almost always substituted with YOUR.

YOU’RE is a contraction of ‘you are’ but millions of us spell it as YOUR which actually means ‘belonging to or associated with the person that the speaker is addressing’.

The rest of the top ten most common spelling errors also revealed that millions of us are confused with words which sound the same but have different meanings.

As well as THERE, THEIR and THEY”RE and YOU’RE / YOUR it seems we also confuse TO / TOO, OF / OFF, WHERE / WERE /WEAR and even ARE / OUR.

Steve McComish, from Motive PR who conducted the research, said: “Many people will ask why spelling these words right matters as long as people can understand the points they are making.

“But sloppy spelling gives away a careless approach and can leave others gasping with disbelief.

“The art of writing letters may have disappeared forever but that doesn’t mean we should give up on standards when it comes to clear online communications.”

To find out more about Motive PR’s social media spelling errors study please visit: https://www.motivepr.co.uk/blog/the-most-misspelled-words-on-social-media