As I’ve been working on my growing list of hard words to spell in the English language, a new category began to emerge: commonly misspelled words. These are the words that are misspelled so often, that we have grown used to the “fake words” and think they’re correct. As an ELA teacher for the past 18 years, I’ve seen my share of these!
Still confused about what I mean? Here are some examples: When trying to spell attendance, we often write: “attendence” with an “e” — not realizing that it then becomes a nonexistent word. Another super common example is “Everytime.” It seems like that would be a correct spelling because “everything” and “everywhere” are real words — but it’s simply not!
Now, I’m not talking here about commonly confused words like the old favorites, “loose vs. lose” or the sandy and sweet pair, “dessert or desert” — all of which are correct, depending on the surrounding meaning and context of the sentence. No — for this list of commonly misspelled words, I’m rounding up the seemingly correct spellings that are simply WRONG.
Together, we can learn some fun tricks to avoid making the mistake of using incorrect spellings like “freind!” Let’s see the list, replete with my hand-drawn illustrations. Click through any of the offerings in the round-up below for each full spelling lesson.
