Bad spellers blame predictive text

Thousands of adults blame SMS for their inability to spell basic everyday words, a study suggests.

Of 2,500 surveyed:

• 40 per cent could not spell “questionnaire”
• 38 per cent were stumped by “accommodate”
• 37 per cent were defeated by “definitely”

Nearly a third were unable to spell “liaison”, “existence” or “occurrence” and other simple words which caused problems were “calendar”, “embarrass”, “library” and “receipt”. Two-thirds blamed their inability to get words right on the predictive text function on their mobile phones.

Alarmingly, 14 per cent did not think it was important to spell properly, and 11 per cent were not bothered by colleagues’ spelling mistakes. Twenty per cent said they avoided writing documents by hand because their spelling was poor, and 59 per cent said they relied on their computer’s spell checker to get things right – even though some are programmed with American English.

Frighteningly 6 per cent said their spelling was so bad they had lost a job because of it.

The Plain English campaign commented:

“People seem less inclined to consider correct spelling important. When we spell words incorrectly, it is bound to cause confusion and make writing more difficult to read.”

The 20 simple words we appear unable to spell:

1. Questionnaire
2. Accommodate
3. Definitely
4. Liaison
5. Existence
6. Occurrence
7. Referring
8. Occurred
9. Millennium
10. Embarrass
11. Calendar
12. Receive
13. Necessary
14. Separate
15. Cemetery
16. Library
17. Accidentally
18. Independent
19. Occasionally
20. Receipt