The blunders that separate good spellers from bad

“SEPARATE” has been named the most misspelt word in an analysis of searches on Google.

A study found that more than 92,000 people typed the word incorrectly over the space of four weeks – more than double the next most misspelt word.

The majority of those making errors mixed up the “a” and the “e”, spelling it “seperate”. Other incorrect variations of the misspelling were “sepperately” and “seperatelly” for separately.

“Questionnaire” 46,000 people in the UK got wrong in the past month – often missing out the double “n”. Potato was the third most misspelt word, with 38,000 getting it wrong, many writing “potatoe”.

The research was carried out by the Knowledge Academy, which analysed Google searches in the UK over four weeks. Other words in the top 10 included diarrhoea, definitely, embarrass, conscience, unnecessary, bureaucracy and manoeuvre.

A spokesman for the Knowledge Academy said: “With 92,100 Google searches for ‘seperate’ or various other misspellings in the last month, it is clear that many people fall victim to replacing the first ‘a’ with an ‘e’.”

Perhaps the British sense of fair play is most often tried by the uneven pattern of English spelling. It is bad enough to suffer others’ mistakes, but far worse ourselves to err, as every human must. It seems unjust for questionnaire to have a double n when commissionaire has one. And why do automatic spellcheckers introduce new errors by changing its to it’s? As we report today, a survey finds separate the most commonly misspelt word. But potato comes close. The moment of shame in 1992 when Vice-president Dan Quayle wrongly corrected the spelling of a 12-year-old to potatoe may be the most memorable of his career, for the shibboleth of English spelling is thought a key to intellect and character. Without changing our whole orthography (which would cut us off from the past), can that change?