Commonly misspelled English words[1] (UK: misspelt words) are words that are often unintentionally misspelled in general writing. A selected list of common words is presented below, under Documented list of common misspellings. Although the word common is subjective depending on the situation, the focus is on general writing, rather than in a specific field. Accepted spellings also vary by country or region, with some rejecting the American or British variants as incorrect for the region.[1][2][3]
Within a particular field of study, such as computer graphics, other words might be more common for misspelling, such as "pixel" misspelled as "pixle" (or variants "cesium" and "caesium"). Sometimes words are purposely misspelled, as a form in slang, abbreviations, or in song lyrics, etc.
In general writing, some words are frequently misspelled, such as the incorrect spelling "concensus"[4] for "consensus"[5]found in numerous webpages.[4] Other common misspellings include "equiptment" (for "equipment"),[4][6]"independant" (for "independent"),[4][7]"readible" (for readable),[3][8]or "usible" (for usable or useable).[3][4][9][10]
Because many words can be extended with prefixes (such as "un-" or "anti-" or "re-") or suffixes (such as "-ly" or "-ing" or "-ness"), a comprehensive list of words prone to misspelling would contain thousands of variations from combining prefixes or suffixes (or both) added to the root words. To limit the scope to common words, the top 350 words are considered (according to various sources).
The following list, of about 350 words, is based on documented lists[4][10] of the top 100, 200, or 400[3] most commonly misspelled words in all variants of the English language, rather than listing every conceivable misspelled word. Some words are followed by examples of misspellings:
Mispronunciation is known to be one of the most common causes of misspelling.[16]Hence, phonetic misspelling is common, once a word is mispronounced. For example, the word realise may be misspelled as "relise".