Misspelling

50 Misspellings

Intermediate Level

Spelling is hard in English, even for advanced English learners. Lots of reading is the best cure for spelling problems .

50 English words misspelled by even advanced English learners

Absence: the common problem is to use two s’s instead of an s and a c. The second s is absent.

Address: Make sure you add two d’s to address.

Advice: Often confused with “advise.” Remember that you advise someone else but you receive advice.

Believe, ceiling, height, piece, receipt, receive, and weird all have similar problems: people reverse the e and i. There’s no good rule for knowing when I comes before e and the opposite; you have to memorize the words. Some words do have easy shortcuts, for example with piece, you get a piece of the pie. With ceiling, try to visualize the two I’s on either side of the L. In height, people also often leave out the gh because it is silent.

Balloon: The correct spelling has two l’s and two o’s. A balloon gets bigger when you blow it up, so it has room for those double letters.

Calendar: that final a is the problem, since it’s often pronounced like an e. Remember that a calendar shows the days, and day sounds like a.

Definite: The final I tends to get switched to a because of how the word is pronounced. Just remember that the root of the word is “finite.”

Dining: When you add -ing to a word ending in e, you remove the e, so it’s not dineing.

Embarrass: There are two r’s and two s’s in embarrass. Try this: I turned really red and felt so silly.

Finally: People tend to leave in the e at the end of fine. Most of the time, e at the end of a word is dropped when a suffix (such as –ally) is added.

Foreign: The g is silent in this word so many people leave it out. Remember that foreign can also mean strange, which contains a g.

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