Brits are increasingly blaming modern technology - and particularly the
spell-checker facility - for their poor spelling, according to a new
poll.
The survey, carried out by OnePoll, was determined to find out which words
were the most commonly misspelt. Some 3,500 British people answered the
survey, which discovered that ‘separate’ is the most commonly misspelt word
among us Brits.
A spokesman for the market research firm said that they made some
interesting discoveries when asking people about their spelling habits. He
explained that many people tend to write words the way they sound, rather
than learning the right way to spell them. He added, ''Fortunately,
computers' spell-check corrects wrongly spelt words for us, but that means
we become lazy and never learn the correct spelling."
Many of the questionnaire’s respondents claimed that computer spell checks
and predictive text messaging could be a bad thing for adult literacy. Two
out of three claim they struggle when writing notes and letters by hand
because they do not have a spell checker to use.
The OnePoll spokesman continued, ''The fact we judge other people's
intelligence by their written word, yet don't like to be judged ourselves,
means we should all pick up a dictionary once in a while.''
Although many of us struggle with spelling ourselves, some 27 per cent of
those questioned by OnePoll said they considered people who can't spell to
be ‘thick’.
The poll named the top ten misspelt words as: separate, definitely,
manoeuvre, embarrass, occurrence, consensus, unnecessary, acceptable,
broccoli and referred.
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