Commonly misspelled words
The words that trip up fluent, educated writers, why they are hard, and the small tricks that make the right spelling automatic.
InteractiveFind the misspelling before the timer runs out. Open Spot the Error →
English spelling is famously irregular, and the words people misspell most are not obscure. They are everyday words like separate, definitely and beautiful. Unlike confused words, which are correctly spelled words used in the wrong place, these are outright misspellings, so a spell-checker will usually catch them. The catch is that spell-checkers aren't everywhere: not in handwritten forms, whiteboard sessions, some text boxes or the moment you are typing a search query.
What the data says people misspell#
Two well-known data points give different but complementary answers.
- Survey data. Oxford University Press's Learning English with Oxford republished a top-20 list from a OnePoll survey reported in the Daily Telegraph on 6 August 2010. The top five were separate, definitely, manoeuvre, embarrass and occurrence.
- Search data. In May 2019, timed to the Scripps National Spelling Bee, Google Trends published the word each US state most often searched for after "how to spell". The Washingtonian reported that beautiful topped the list in eight states, with Pennsylvania searching pneumonia, Louisiana indict and Hawaii, fittingly, Hawaii.
The survey list skews toward words with doubled letters and French borrowings; the search list skews toward words whose pronunciation hides their spelling. Those two causes explain most of the table below.
The table: 50 commonly misspelled words#
| Correct | Common misspelling | Why it's hard / memory trick |
|---|---|---|
| separate | seperate | There's "a rat" in separate. |
| definitely | definately | It contains "finite." |
| accommodate | accomodate | Big enough to accommodate two c's and two m's. |
| embarrass | embarass | Double r, double s: you go really red, so sorry. |
| occurrence | occurence | Double c, double r, and -ence. |
| a lot | alot | Two words, like "a little." |
| receive | recieve | One case where "e before i after c" holds. |
| believe | beleive | Don't believe a lie (l-i-e). |
| beautiful | beutiful, beatiful | Starts like "beau": b-e-a-u. |
| necessary | neccessary, necesary | One collar (c), two sleeves (ss). |
| unnecessary | unecessary | un + necessary: keep both n's. |
| conscience | concience | con + science. |
| conscious | concious | Same sc as conscience. |
| consensus | concensus | Related to "consent," not "census." |
| supersede | supercede | The only common English word ending in -sede. |
| acceptable | acceptible | You can accept it: accept + able. |
| referred | refered | Stress on the second syllable doubles the r. |
| occurred | occured | Same rule as referred. |
| beginning | begining | begin + n + ing. |
| committed | commited | Double m, double t. |
| parallel | paralell, parralel | The two l's in the middle are parallel lines. |
| broccoli | brocolli | Double c, single l. |
| questionnaire | questionaire | French-style double n. |
| millennium | millenium | Double l, double n (Latin mille + annus). |
| bureaucracy | beaurocracy | bureau + cracy. |
| entrepreneur | entrepeneur | entre + pre + neur. |
| connoisseur | connoiseur | Double n, double s. |
| liaison | liason | Two i's: l-i-a-i-s-o-n. |
| manoeuvre / maneuver | manouver | British vs American spelling; both are correct in their own region. |
| liquefy | liquify | -efy like "stupefy," despite "liquid." |
| particularly | particuly | particular + ly: say every syllable. |
| February | Febuary | Feb-ru-ary: the first r is often silent in speech. |
| Wednesday | Wensday | Wednes-day; say "Wed-nes" to yourself. |
| library | libary | Two r's: lib-r-ary. |
| pronunciation | pronounciation | The verb is pronounce; the noun drops the o. |
| mischievous | mischievious | Three syllables: mis-chie-vous. |
| weird | wierd | Weird is weird: it breaks i-before-e. |
| seize | sieze | Another i-before-e rebel. |
| foreign | foriegn | e before i, no c in sight. |
| neighbor / neighbour | nieghbor | ei "as in neighbor and weigh." |
| height | heighth | No final h, unlike length and width. |
| privilege | priviledge | No d: privi + lege. |
| calendar | calender | Ends in -ar. |
| cemetery | cemetary | Three e's. |
| gauge | guage | a before u, in alphabetical order. |
| harass | harrass | One r, two s's (opposite of embarrass). |
| indict | indite | Silent c; sounds like "indite." |
| pneumonia | neumonia, pnemonia | Silent p, from Greek pneumon (lung). |
| rhythm | rythm | Rhythm Helps Your Two Hips Move. |
| threshold | threshhold | Only one h in the middle. |
Rows for separate, definitely, embarrass, occurrence, consensus, unnecessary, acceptable, broccoli, referred, bureaucracy, supersede, questionnaire, connoisseur, a lot, entrepreneur, particularly, liquefy, conscience, parallel and manoeuvre come from the OUP list; beautiful, indict and pneumonia from the 2019 Google data. Wikipedia keeps a much longer list of commonly misspelled English words.
Why these words are hard#
Pronunciation hides the letters#
OUP's explanation for its top two is simple: most people pronounce separate with something like an "e" in the middle and sound out definitely as "definately," and they write what they hear. The same goes for the silent first r many people drop from February (see our page on commonly mispronounced words) and the swallowed middle of Wednesday and library.
Doubled letters#
English gives few clues about when to double a consonant. Is it accommodate, accomodate or acommodate? Words with two sets of doubles (embarrass, committee, occurrence) are the worst, and near-twins pull in opposite directions: embarrass has a double r, harass doesn't.
Borrowed spelling patterns#
OUP singles out manoeuvre, bureaucracy and entrepreneur as French-pattern words that don't follow English spelling clues. English orthography absorbed Latin, Greek and French conventions without fully regularizing them, which is also why pneumonia and rhythm keep their Greek letters.
Rules with too many exceptions#
"I before e, except after c" is the rule everyone remembers and almost nobody can rely on. The UK Department for Education's 2009 Support for Spelling guidance said it "is not worth teaching," pointing out that words like sufficient, veil and their look like exceptions, as Wikipedia's history of the rule notes. The same article lists science, species and society as common cie words, and seize, weird, either, leisure and protein as ei words with no c at all.
How to actually fix your spelling#
Lists like this one are useful for reference but poor for learning. What works is narrower and more repetitive:
- Keep a personal list. Every time a spell-checker corrects you, write the word down. Most people's list is short and stable.
- Use one memory hook per word, such as the ones in the table, and say it as you write.
- Type it correctly, repeatedly. A lot of spelling is motor memory. Short daily sessions of free typing practice, plus typing your own problem words a few times each, build the right letter sequence into your fingers.
- Space your review. Flashcards with spaced repetition are made for the stubborn few. We keep a roundup of the best free flashcard apps.
- Proofread for typos separately from spelling. Fumbled keystrokes (teh, adn) are a different problem from not knowing a word. If those are your weakness, a structured touch-typing course fixes them at the source.
Once your spelling is clean, the next most visible errors are wrong-but-correctly-spelled words; see commonly confused words and common grammar mistakes.
Frequently asked questions
What is the most commonly misspelled word in English?
There is no single official answer because it depends on the data. A 2010 OnePoll survey reported by the Daily Telegraph (and republished by Oxford University Press) put separate first and definitely second. Google's 2019 'how to spell' search data had beautiful as the top query in eight US states.
Does 'i before e except after c' actually work?
Only partly. The UK Department for Education's 2009 Support for Spelling guidance said the rule 'is not worth teaching', and common words such as science, weird, seize and their break it.
Is it 'a lot' or 'alot'?
A lot, two words. Alot appears on Oxford University Press's list of commonly misspelled words because the phrase is spoken as one unit.
Is 'mischievious' a word?
Dictionary.com notes that mischievious was a fairly standard alternative from about the 16th to the 18th century, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, but both the four-syllable spelling and pronunciation are now generally regarded as nonstandard. Write and say mischievous.
How do I get better at spelling as an adult?
Keep a personal list of the words you actually misspell, practice them in short daily sessions, and type them correctly many times so the right sequence becomes muscle memory. Spaced repetition flashcards help for the stubborn ones.
Sources
Every factual claim on this page links to one of these. Checked October 2026. See how we source.
- Learning English with Oxford (OUP): 20 commonly misspelt words in English learningenglishwithoxford.oup.com
- Washingtonian: Google's 2019 most-searched 'how to spell' words by state washingtonian.com
- Wikipedia: I before E except after C en.wikipedia.org
- Wikipedia: Commonly misspelled English words en.wikipedia.org
- Dictionary.com: mischievous dictionary.com
- Wikipedia: English orthography en.wikipedia.org