I am enjoying Dreyer's English: An Utterly Correct Guide to Clarity and Style. Author Benjamin Dreyer, copy chief of Random House, included a chapter titled "Notes on Easily Misspelled Words." Thinking you will enjoy the challenge, I offer a spelling test. I chose 20 of Dreyer's 116 easily misspelled words, plus variants, to test you.
In this list, 10 words are correct, 10 incorrect. Which 10 need correcting?
accommodation
bookkeeper
bouyant
concensus
dilemma
fourty-four
fuschia
genealogy
glamour
guttural
indispensable
momento
occurrence
perogative
poinsettia
restaurateur
supercede
suprise
threshhold
unwieldly
Have you found the 10 correct words yet? They appear below.
accommodation
bookkeeper
dilemma
genealogy (This one could have fooled me.)
glamour (Glamor is also correct according to Merriam-Webster's.)
guttural
indispensable
occurrence
poinsettia
restaurateur (This spelling was a total surprise. Restauranteur is also correct according to Merriam-Webster's--despite Mr. Dreyer's objection.)
Have you figured out how to correctly spell these items?
bouyant
concensus
fuschia
fourty-four
momento
perogative
supercede
suprise
threshhold
unwieldly
Here are the corrected versions:
buoyant
consensus
forty-four
fuchsia
memento
prerogative (I have to admit I couldn't recognize what was wrong with perogative.)
supersede (I never get this one wrong because I think of supersede as "sit in the place of.")
surprise (Such a simple word, with such potential for error.)
threshold
unwieldy
Which words fooled you?
In my writing classes, the most often misspelled word is misspelled--with a missing letter s.
Benjamin Dreyer notes that "no one expects you to memorize the spelling of every word in the notoriously irregular, unmemorizable English language." When you are unsure, use a dictionary. His dictionary of choice is Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary.
To learn much more about recognizing errors in writing, get a copy of Dreyer's English. I'll share a full review of the book in a few days.
Lynn
Syntax Training
Was fun. Got 7 right. Occurrence, indispensable, poinsettia got me.
Also with auto correct these get mostly eliminated I think. On a separate note as a writer I find myself googling for thesaurus more for the right word.
Posted by: Kumar | March 04, 2019 at 06:45 PM
I also got 7. The words poinsettia, bookkeeper and genealogy got me! I love that you included "restaurateur." I Googled this word the other day, but with the second spelling: "restauranteur." I was hoping to find a synonym for "foodie." Restauranteur wasn't exactly what I was looking for. Great exercise.
Posted by: Kelly | March 04, 2019 at 07:08 PM
Hi Kumar,
Seven is good. "Occurrence" and "indispensable" are important words to know. "Poinsettia" is tricky because most people pronounce it a different way.
Autocorrect does catch most of these if you pay attention to it. However, mine missed "fuschia" and "unwieldly."
Lynn
Posted by: Lynn Gaertner-Johnston | March 04, 2019 at 08:00 PM
Hi Kelly,
Nice work. Reading "Dreyer's English," I was surprised to learn that the preferred word is "restaurateur" from the French. Dreyer doesn't even accept the n version.
Lynn
Posted by: Lynn Gaertner-Johnston | March 04, 2019 at 08:03 PM
I easily spotted 8 mistakes and then got stuck wondering which could be the other 2. I got fooled by buoyant and unwieldy because I've never come across them and also don't know their meaning.
I love this kind of test, thank you for sharing it with us!
Posted by: Deborah | March 05, 2019 at 01:29 AM
This was fun! I missed a few but I really enjoyed this.
Posted by: Tamara D. DeBose | March 05, 2019 at 06:17 AM
Hi Deborah and Tamara,
Thanks for testing yourselves and commenting. I wonder how the test would have gone if I had not stated how many words were misspelled. Harder, right?
Deborah, "buoyant" and "unwieldy" are good words to add to your vocabulary. Look up their meanings and see whether you can work them into conversations this week.
Lynn
Posted by: Lynn Gaertner-Johnston | March 05, 2019 at 08:20 AM