Adieu, Dictionary: We Now Rely on Autocorrect, Spell-Check, and Google

Do you judge the spelling in texts, emails, and other digital documents? You’re not alone. While 93% of Americans look up how to spell certain words (and 63% admit to misspelling the same words constantly, such as receive and restaurant), another 61% claim they judge anyone who misspells often.

Those are only a few of the findings by unscrambled words(Opens in a new window), a website that has a vested interest in spelling—its main function is as a word unscrambler, the kind of tool you’d better not be using in your Scrabble or Words with Friends games. In September, the site performed two bits of research: One was a survey of 1,051 US citizens asking about their online spelling habits. The second was a deep dive into 5,000 Google search terms from the last two years related to spelling, to see what people need help spelling on a national and state-level basis.

Most germane for us is how often people pay attention to the much-maligned autocorrect feature found on just about every mobile keyboard, many a word processor, and in email: 79% rely on it. The infographic below also shows that the vast majority of people do an extra spell-check on emails (86%), text messages (62%), and especially on documents (92%) before sending.

All that extra checking, you would think, stems from self-awareness. But when asked how often they misspell when writing or texting, most respondents actually claimed they hardly ever screw up or even have to look up words.

The most gob-smacking insight from the data may be that people don’t look up words much with a dictionary, either physical or app-based. More (36%) typically use document spell check. The majority—a staggering 92%—simply search the term. (Personally, I ask Alexa.)

The investigation into Google search terms makes even more sense with that revelation. Here’s the list of the words most searched. As noted in the full report, “i before e, except after c” ought to make a comeback soon to the school curricula.

We leave you with the list of the most misspelled words in each individual state in the union, plus the rank of each state for most bad spellers per 100,000 residents. Maryland, Colorado, and New York are the top three states whose citizens seek out correct spellings, mostly for the words conscientious, ornery, and hors d’oeuvre, respectively.

For more, including a breakdown of which cities have the highest number of spelling requests on the search engine, read the full report at unscrambled words(Opens in a new window).

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