The English language is famously full of confusing and often contradictory spelling conventions. You know it’s bad when misspell itself is one of the most common misspellings!
To identify the words that consistently give people trouble, we analyzed Dictionary.com search data to compile this list of the most commonly misspelled words. For each word, we prepared tips to help you remember how to spell it correctly from now on. Pro tip: Be extra careful with any word that has a lot of vowels or double letters—and especially any word that has both! Don’t forget: when in doubt about a spelling, look it up here!
misspell
❌ Common misspelling: mispell
✅ Tips to spell it correctly: You can remember that there are two s’s in misspell because the word is made up of two parts: the prefix mis-, which means “incorrectly,” and the verb spell.
You can remember how to spell misspell by thinking: “Miss Pell” would be disappointed if you spelled her name incorrectly.
grateful
❌ Common misspelling: greatful
✅ Tips to spell it correctly: It is tempting to spell grateful using the adjective great, as in greatful, but you have to resist. Remember that when you are grateful, you are full of gratitude. Like gratitude, grateful begins with grat-. As for the ending: the common suffix is -ful, not -full—most words with this ending only use one l.
success and successful
❌ Common misspellings: sucess, sucessful, succesful
✅ Tips to spell it correctly: To remember how to spell success, keep in mind that “To be considered a success, others need to see (two c’s) some smarts (two s’s) in you.” Success has a double c in the middle and a double s at the end. To spell successful, just add the suffix -ful to the base word (success) without any other changes.
separate
❌ Common misspelling: seperate
✅ Tips to spell it correctly: The word separate is often misspelled seperate because of the way it is commonly pronounced [ sep-er-it ]. It makes sense people would think there is an extra e in there. The word separate can be remembered with the phrase “separate the pirate with an a, not an i (eye).” If you swap out the i in pirate with an a, you get the ending of separate.
Learn more about how to separate the correct and incorrect spellings of “separate” in your mind.
believe
❌ Common misspellings: beleive, belive
✅ Tips to spell it correctly: The easiest way to remember how to spell believe is with the classic mnemonic device “i before e, except after c.” To remember that there is a second e in believe, keep in mind that it is pronounced [ bih-leev ]. That long e sound in leev reminds us that there is an e in the second syllable.
receive
❌ Common misspelling: recieve
✅ Tips to spell it correctly: Speaking of that classic mnemonic device, “i before e, except after c,” receive is one of its exceptions. The correct order is e before i. The good news for remembering the exception is that there are other exceptions that also end in -ceive.
perceive
❌ Common misspelling: percieve
✅ Tips to spell it correctly: Another example of the overapplication of the “i before e” rule is the misspelling of perceive as percieve. As in receive, the correct order is e first, then i.
achieve
❌ Common misspelling: acheive
✅ Tips to spell it correctly: The spelling rule “i before e, except after c” also applies to achieve, although in a slightly unusual way. Since the letters do not come directly after the c—they are separated by an h—achieve does follow the “i before e” rule.
liaison
❌ Common misspellings: liason, liasion, laison
✅ Tips to spell it correctly: The word liaison, probably because it comes from French, is an easy one to misspell in any number of ways. Also likely because it comes from French, there are even more ways to pronounce liaison. To help you remember how to spell liaison, think of the phrase “Lia is on it.”
benefit
❌ Common misspelling: benifit
✅ Tips to spell it correctly: The word benefit is made up of bene-, which means “well,” and -fit, from the Latin factum, meaning “deed.” Keep in mind the phrase “Ben effortlessly fixed it” to help you remember that benefit begins with benef-, not benif-.
definitely
❌ Common misspellings: definately, definitly, definetly, definetely
✅ Tips to spell it correctly: A common theme in many of these commonly misspelled words is that it is not always clear what vowels are required. This is definitely the case with definitely. When you’re spelling definitely, it can help to think of it in parts: de-finite-ly (the related word finite means “having bounds or limits”).
persistent
❌ Common misspelling: persistant
✅ Tips to spell it correctly: One way to remember the spelling of persistent is with the sentence “I asked both my siblings, and per sis, tent sales are best in summer.” That’s right—you need a tent for camping, not a tant.
occurrence
❌ Common misspellings: occurence, occurance, ocurrance
✅ Tips to spell it correctly: To help remember how to spell occurrence, keep in mind the phrase ocean current, which will help you to include a double c and a double r, as well as to end with –ence (and not -ance).
accommodate
❌ Common misspelling: accomodate
✅ Tips to spell it correctly: Accommodate is commonly misspelled because it is easy to miss that double m. The phrase access common accommodations can help us remember how to spell accommodate. Like access, accommodate has a double c, and like common, it has a double m.
committed
❌ Common misspellings: commited, comitted
✅ Tips to spell it correctly: Committed is another word with double letters that can be hard to keep track of. To spell committed, it can help to start with the base verb commit. Then, think of it as “Commit, Ted!” (Sorry, Ted.)
Part of the confusion around the spelling of committed is that the related word commitment does not have a double t.
address
❌ Common misspelling: adress
✅ Tips to spell it correctly: If you misspell an address, your letter or package might not get delivered. Misspelling the word address itself has lower stakes, but it is still best avoided. To help remember the two d’s in address, keep in mind the phrase add the address.
aggressive
❌ Common misspellings: agresive, aggresive
✅ Tips to spell it correctly: Continuing on the theme of double letters, it can be hard to keep track of them all in the word aggressive. Sometimes people leave them out altogether (agresive) or only remember the double g (aggresive). Let’s start with the base word aggress. It’s spelled just like address, with a double g instead of a double d. Then, you simply add the common suffix -ive to get aggressive. The phrase address aggressive words can help you remember this tip.
acknowledgment
✅ Tips to spell it correctly: The word acknowledgment is particularly tricky when it comes to spelling. In American English, it is most commonly spelled as acknowledgment, without an e after the g. In British English, an e is included: acknowledgement. The same pattern holds true for judgment (American English) and judgement (British English).
surprise
❌ Common misspelling: suprise
✅ Tips to spell it correctly: Some words are hard to spell because we typically skip a whole sound when we say them aloud. One example is surprise, often pronounced [ suh–prahyz ]. Because the initial r sound is not emphasized, it is easy to misspell it as suprise. You can remember the spelling of surprise with the tongue twister “The surfers sure surprised me.” The words surfers, sure, and surprise all begin with sur-.
interesting
❌ Common misspellings: intresting, intersting
✅ Tips to spell it correctly: When saying interesting aloud, we also tend to skip a whole syllable of it (often pronouncing [ in-truh-string ], as opposed to [ in-ter-uh-sting ]). This leads to misspellings like intresting or intersting. It helps to break interesting into two parts: inter- and -esting. You are likely familiar with inter- from words like internet, that thing you use to find interesting stuff.
environment
❌ Common misspelling: enviroment
✅ Tips to spell it correctly: A common misspelling of environment is enviroment because the second n is often not enunciated when it is pronounced. To help remember the second n, think of the sentence “The environment has iron in it.”
perseverance
❌ Common misspelling: perserverance
✅ Tips to spell it correctly: The word perseverance (correctly pronounced [ pur-suh–veer–uhns ]) is often mispronounced with an r sound in the second syllable, and then misspelled perserverance as a result of that mispronunciation. The easiest way to remember how to correctly spell perseverance is to break it into parts: per-sever-ance. You can remember these three parts with the expression “Per several of my aunts, perseverance is important.”
license
❌ Common misspelling: lisence
✅ Tips to spell it correctly: The letters c and s cause a lot of confusion because they often make the same [ ss ] sound. That’s why it can be hard to spell license, resulting in misspellings like lisence. To make matters worse, license is one of those words with different spellings in different varieties of English. In American English, license is the correct spelling. In British English, licence is the correct spelling. To remember the order of the c and s in license when spelling it in American English, remember: “You need a license to take a car instead of the subway.” The c (car) comes before the s (subway).
apparently
❌ Common misspelling: apparrently, apparantly
✅ Tips to spell it correctly: The word apparently is one of those words that is hard to spell both because of its double letters and its vowels. It can help to break apparently into sections: ap-parent-ly. As you can see, nothing is apparent without a happy parent. This reminds us that there is a double p in apparent, like in happy, and that parent is needed to spell apparent. Once you’ve got the base word apparent, just add the suffix -ly, which is used in many adverbs, to get apparently.
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