Our bad spelling leaves us lost for words
MILLIONS of Britons are being left red-faced by their poor spelling - foxed by everyday words like embarrass.
Accommodation, restaurant and February also spell trouble.
Campaigners blame "text speak" and computer spell-checking for making people lazier in day-to-day communication.
But they warn that when laboursaving devices cannot be relied upon people are more likely to make errors in formal letters or job applications.
The study by internet search engine Ask. com looked at which words received the most queries requesting a correct spelling.
Top of the list was accommodation, which was variously misspelled as acommodation, accomodation or accommadation.
Spellers also botched accessory and opportunity, and embarrass was commonly written as embarass, embarras and embaress.
Hundreds were puzzled by the surprising letter order of eighth, and the silent "p" in receipt. Wrong versions of guarantee included garantee, guarentee and garrantee, and licence was misspelled as license. Restaurant, of
French origin, was too challenging for many - written as restarant, resterant or restaurent.
Some are calling for English orthography - spelling - to be simplified to make it easier to learn.
The Spelling Society's Jack Bovill said: "We would cite the need for the Government to step in here and to take the burden off the teacher, who has had to cope with rafts of reforms since the Fifties which have done nothing to improve literacy rates." Schools Minister Jim Knight was last week forced to make a grovelling apology after a litany of spelling and grammatical errors on his internet blog.
Mr Knight, 43, responsible for classroom standards, left reports about his constituency activities littered with basic mistakes.
Among his howlers were pernsioners instead of pensioners and maintainence rather than maintenance.
The minister also repeatedly ignored the "i before e except after c" rule that used to be drummed into every school pupil. He wrote acheiving in place of achieving and receieved instead of received. Cesar Mascaraque, of Ask. com, said: "With so much rapid communication these days, it seems people often spell words incorrectly in emails and text messages without really bothering too much.
"However, when it comes to formal letters and even job applications, they need to get the correct spellings in place.
"Perhaps people are putting less emphasis on correct spellings in everyday communication these days, but as a consequence their spelling is suffering."
