TextTrust's Top 50 Spelling Mistakes

After having spell checked over 13 million web pages, TextTrust.com has come across a number of frequently misspelled words. Here's our list of Top 50 Spelling Mistakes taken from the TextTrust.com database and a few anecdotes to go along with each table.

TextTrust's Top 50 Spelling Mistakes

TextTrust.com Misspelling Rank	Misspelled Word	Correctly Spelled Word
1	accomodation	accommodation
2	managment	management
3	infomation	information
4	recieve	receive
5	recieved	received
6	Independant	independent
7	assesment	assessment
8	commerical	commercial
9	accomodate	accommodate
10	thier	their
11	occured	occurred
12	occuring	occurring
13	opportunites	opportunities
14	activites	activities
15	futher	further
16	addtion	addition
17	committment	commitment
18	Assocation	association
19	offical	official
20	infromation	information
21	commited	committed
22	realy	really
23	reponse	response
24	Commision	commission
25	throught	throughout
26	Goverment	government
27	Recieving	receiving
28	sucessful	successful
29	Developement	development
30	accross	across
31	enviroment	environment
32	perfomance	performance
33	Facilties	facilities
34	Accomodations	accommodations
35	excercise	exercise
36	Commitee	committee
37	enviromental	environmental
38	thoughout	throughout
39	Mangement	management
40	Resouces	resources
41	relevent	relevant
42	adminstration	administration
43	responsibilty	responsibility
44	recyling	recycling
45	catagories	categories
46	avaliable	available
47	Governement	government
48	definately	definitely
49	responsiblity	responsibility
50	responsibilites	responsibilities

 

While this list represent the Top 50 Spelling Mistakes, it represents fewer than 50 words (only 38 unique words, to be exact). Here are the correct words from the list that occupy more than one ranking:

• accommodate - 1, 9 and 34
• management - 2 and 39
• information - 3 and 20
• receive - 4, 5 and 20
• occur - 11 and 12
• throughout - 25 and 38
• government - 26 and 47
• environment - 31 and 37
• responsibility - 43, 49 and 50

 

TextTrust's Top 50 Spelling Mistakes by Sorted Difficulty

Wondering why some words are misspelled more than others? This table tells you what percentage of the time a word is misspelled. The word accommodation is misspelled almost 24% of the time! There are two c's and two m's in accommodation, which also holds true for accommodate (misspelled 8.5% of the time). The lower a word is on the list, the easier it is to spell, but it's used so much more often, which is why it's on our list.

TextTrust.com Spelling Difficulty Rank	Misspelled Word	Correctly Spelled Word	% Spell Wrong
1	accomodation	accommodation	23.90%
2	Accomodations	accommodations	13.33%
3	definately	definitely	12.32%
4	knowledgable	knowledgeable	8.91%
5	accomodate	accommodate	8.49%
6	occuring	occurring	7.91%
7	occured	occurred	6.94%
8	Independant	independent	3.39%
9	Questionaire	questionnaire	3.01%
10	seperately	separately	2.63%
11	targetting	targeting	2.08%
12	prefered	preferred	2.03%
13	recieved	received	1.99%
14	equiped	equipped	1.96%
15	occassional	occasional	1.66%
16	Bandwith	bandwidth	1.63%
17	occassionally	occasionally	1.50%
18	commited	committed	1.41%
19	refered	referred	1.30%
20	excercise	exercise	1.22%
21	recieve	receive	1.20%
22	opportunites	opportunities	1.17%
23	usefull	useful	0.96%
24	Recieving	receiving	0.93%
25	committment	commitment	0.91%
26	realy	really	0.89%
27	activites	activities	0.84%
28	reponse	response	0.79%
29	extention	extension	0.79%
30	Commision	commission	0.70%
31	succesful	successful	0.69%
32	assesment	assessment	0.69%
33	commerical	commercial	0.68%
34	offical	official	0.67%
35	similiar	similar	0.66%
36	throught	throughout	0.66%
37	maintainance	maintenance	0.59%
38	Commitee	committee	0.52%
39	acheive	achieve	0.49%
40	managment	management	0.46%
41	Accessable	accessible	0.46%
42	enviromental	environmental	0.46%
43	accross	across	0.43%
44	Univeristy	university	0.42%
45	relevent	relevant	0.41%
46	enviroment	environment	0.40%
47	adminstration	administration	0.38%
48	arrangments	arrangements	0.37%
49	responsibilty	responsibility	0.36%
50	Goverment	government	0.34%

 

It's clear that the top 5 words on the list all seem to be difficult to spell. If you're interested in why certain words are misspelled, read the article Is Your Web Site Suffering From These Misspellings?.

Our percentages were determined by identifying how many times each mistake was found on Google, and how many times its correct usage was found, then we did the math.

 

TextTrust's Top 50 Spelling Mistakes Sorted By Google Frequency

Plain and simple, this list tells which words you're likely to see misspelled.

TextTrust.com Misspelling Frequency Rank	Misspelled Word	Correctly Spelled Word	Frequency of Misspelled Word on Google (Millions)
1	Independant	independent	44.1
2	accomodation	accommodation	41.1
3	definately	definitely	36.1
4	recieved	received	26.7
5	opportunites	opportunities	26.6
6	recieve	receive	25.6
8	Accomodations	accommodations	23.2
7	thier	their	23.2
9	occured	occurred	22
10	infomation	information	20.9
11	offical	official	19.9
12	activites	activities	19.8
13	Univeristy	university	19.8
14	managment	management	19.4
15	realy	really	15.5
16	usefull	useful	15.1
17	accomodate	accommodate	14.6
18	Goverment	government	12.4
19	occuring	occurring	11
20	Developement	development	10.9
21	reponse	response	10.5
22	commerical	commercial	10.2
23	buisness	business	10.1
24	similiar	similar	9.84
25	enviroment	environment	9.12
26	Busines	business	8.94
27	prefered	preferred	8.63
28	adminstration	administration	8.17
29	commited	committed	8.09
30	accross	across	7.74
31	knowledgable	knowledgeable	7.66
32	throught	throughout	7.12
33	avaliable	available	6.64
34	Commitee	committee	6.45
35	Assocation	association	6.28
36	Orginal	original	6.17
37	Commision	commission	6.06
38	catagories	categories	6.05
39	succesful	successful	5.94
40	seperately	separately	5.76
41	extention	extension	5.55
42	excercise	exercise	5.51
43	enviromental	environmental	5.28
44	committment	commitment	5.26
45	Mangement	management	5.24
46	refered	referred	5.09
47	assesment	assessment	4.96
48	perfomance	performance	4.89
49	Recieving	receiving	4.83
50	maintainance	maintenance	4.77

 

 

TextTrust's Top 50 Correctly Used Words Sorted By Google Frequency

This list tells you which words are used the most. Google no longer posts the number of pages it has indexed, but last count, it was roughly 8.3 billion pages indexed. This means that you're likely to find the words 'information', 'service' and 'services' at least once on every web page you read! Whereas the word 'visitor' is likely to be found once every 8 pages.

Incidentally, the most common misspelling of 'information' (which occurs 13.72 billion times) is 'infomation' (which occurs 20.9 million times), creating quite a low misspelling percentage of 0.15%, which doesn't make our Top 50 List in that category.

TextTrust.com Correct Usage Frequency Rank	Misspelled Word	Correctly Spelled Word	Frequency of Correct Usage on Google (Billions)
1	infomation	information	13.72
2	sevices	services	8.92
3	sevice	service	8.77
4	thier	their	7.41
5	buisness	business	7.39
6	avaialble	available	6.69
7	Resouces	resources	6.14
8	Orginal	original	4.99
9	Developement	development	4.76
10	Univeristy	university	4.75
11	inlcuding	including	4.38
12	managment	management	4.2
13	Governement	government	3.6
14	Deparment	department	3.14
15	offical	official	2.95
16	Additonal	additional	2.79
17	Inlcudes	includes	2.38
18	activites	activities	2.35
19	catagories	categories	2.3
20	opportunties	opportunities	2.28
21	enviroment	environment	2.26
22	perfomance	performance	2.19
23	Janaury	January	2.15
24	adminstration	administration	2.14
25	recieve	receive	2.13
26	Febuary	February	2.13
27	Insitute	institute	2.1
28	requirments	requirements	1.98
29	futher	further	1.94
30	Assocation	association	1.86
31	accross	across	1.81
32	realy	really	1.74
33	addtion	addition	1.66
34	usefull	useful	1.58
35	guidlines	guidelines	1.55
36	Saftey	safety	1.54
37	commerical	commercial	1.49
38	similiar	similar	1.48
39	Divison	division	1.35
40	recieved	received	1.34
41	reponse	response	1.33
42	reponsible	responsible	1.33
43	Independant	independent	1.3
44	Commitee	committee	1.24
45	Facilties	facilities	1.18
46	enviromental	environmental	1.16
47	Vistors	visitors	1.09
48	throught	throughout	1.08
49	relevent	relevant	1.05
50	responsibilty	responsibility	1.04

 

Source: The TextTrust.com Editing Team