Commonly Misspelled Words and Tricks to Remember Them

Everyone has a handful of words they have looked up a dozen times and still do not trust. For many people it is definitely, separate or accommodate. For others it is necessary, occurred or rhythm. These words are not hard because the writer is careless. They are hard because each one has a specific trap in it: a doubled letter you cannot hear, a vowel that is not clearly pronounced, a letter that stopped being said centuries ago.

That is good news, because a trap you can name is a trap you can avoid. This guide groups the most commonly misspelled English words by the kind of trap they contain, gives a memory trick for each that points straight at the hard part, and ends with a simple way to make the right spelling stick for good.

A note on the tricks. The best ones do more than rhyme; they explain. "Recommend is re plus commend" is better than any jingle, because it tells you why the letters are there and carries over to other words. Where a word has a reason like that, we give the reason. Where it does not, we give a hook.

Why the same words trip everyone up

Most misspellings of common words fall into five groups.

Doubled letters you cannot hear. English doubles consonants for reasons of history and word-building, but a double m sounds exactly like a single one. Nothing in the sound of accommodate tells you it has two c's and two m's.

The schwa. Most unstressed vowels in English shrink to a neutral "uh" sound. You cannot hear whether the middle of separate is a or e, because nobody pronounces it clearly.

The ie and ei choice. The old rhyme helps with some words and fails with others, and the failures are common words.

Silent letters. Many were once pronounced; some were added by scholars who wanted English to look like Latin.

Words that sound like other words. Affect and effect, their and there. These are choices between two correct spellings, and they get their own guide: our post on homophones that confuse everyone covers 50 of them.

The first four groups are below.

Double trouble: letters you cannot hear

Two patterns explain several of these. When you add an ending to a word whose last syllable is stressed and ends in one vowel plus one consonant, the consonant doubles: occur, occurred; begin, beginning; refer, referred. When the stress is elsewhere, it usually does not: open, opened; visit, visited. And when a prefix meets a root, both keep their letters, so mis plus spell gives misspell and un plus necessary gives unnecessary. Prefixes are the easiest doubles of all once you see them.

ie or ei: where the rhyme works and where it fails

The full version of the old rule is "i before e, except after c, or when sounded like 'ay' as in neighbor and weigh". That version is right for a good number of common words and wrong for some others. It is worth knowing both halves.

The most efficient approach is to trust the rule for the words it covers and learn the small set of common exceptions as a group: weird, seize, leisure, foreign, either, neither, height, their. Eight exceptions are far easier to hold than a rule you no longer trust.

Silent letters and letters you barely say

Two of these, government and environment, are not really silent-letter words. The n is there in careful speech but disappears in everyday talk, and so it disappears from people's spelling too. The fix is to see the word as its parts: govern plus -ment. For true silent letters, look for a relative where the letter is heard: debit for debt, signal for sign, bombard for bomb. That link does more than any rhyme.

The unclear vowel: schwa words

The schwa is the "uh" sound in unstressed syllables, and it is behind more adult spelling errors than any other single sound. The best defense is a related word where the vowel is stressed and clear.

Relatives beat rhymes whenever you can find one: definite and finite, grammar and grammatical, competition and compete, comparable and compare. Our guide to the schwa has many more pairs.

Other everyday offenders

How to write your own trick for a stubborn word

Sooner or later you will meet a word that is not on any list but keeps catching you. You can build a trick for it in about a minute, and a trick you made yourself is often easier to recall than one you read.

Start by finding the exact spot that goes wrong. Write the word the way you usually misspell it, put the correct version next to it, and circle the difference. It is almost always one or two letters, not the whole word. That spot is the only part the trick needs to cover.

Then look for a reason, in this order. First, parts: does the word split into pieces you already know, the way recommend splits into re and commend? Second, relatives: is there a related word where the unclear letter is heard, the way debit shows the b in debt? Third, history: does the word's origin explain the odd letter, the way Woden explains the d in Wednesday? A quick look in an etymology dictionary answers this in seconds.

Only if none of those works, make a hook: a short, slightly absurd picture or phrase built on the problem letters, like the rat in separate. Keep it tied to the letters themselves. A hook that makes you smile but does not tell you which letter to write is no help at the keyboard. Our post on which mnemonics work and which waste time looks at the evidence.

How to make a spelling stick

A trick gets a word right once. Keeping it right next month takes something else: practice of the right kind, at the right times.

Practice from memory, not by copying. Look at the word and notice its hard part, then cover it and write it from memory, then check. That last step matters. Pulling a word out of memory strengthens it far more than reading it again, as Henry Roediger and Jeffrey Karpicke showed in their 2006 work on the testing effect. Copying a word you can see requires no memory at all.

Come back after gaps. Practice a word today, again tomorrow, then after a few days, then a week, then a month. Spreading practice out is one of the most reliable findings in memory research, confirmed across hundreds of experiments in a 2006 review by Nicholas Cepeda and colleagues. A word crammed once is gone by next week; a word that keeps coming back stays.

Keep the list short and personal. Ten words at a time is plenty. And the best list is your own: the words you actually get wrong in emails and documents. A general list of "commonly misspelled words" is only a starting point. Our twenty-minute self-audit shows how to build yours, and our list of the 100 words adults misspell most goes further than this one.

Handwriting or typing? For young children, writing letters by hand helps them learn letter shapes. For adults, the medium matters much less than whether you are recalling the word or copying it. Practice in whichever form you will use the word.

Do not lean on spell-check. It will fix definately for you, and in doing so it takes away the moment of recall that would have taught you. Keep a note of the words it corrects most often; those are your practice list.

What to do next

Choose the five words from these tables that you most often get wrong. Write each one's trick in a sentence, practice them from memory for five minutes today, and test yourself again tomorrow and next week.

If you would like the reviews scheduled for you, Spelling.School does this. It says each word, you type it, and it shows exactly which letters were wrong and where the hard part is. Then it schedules the word for review with spaced repetition. You can try five words without signing up. Whatever you use, the rule is the same: recall it, check it, and come back to it.

Questions people ask

What is the most commonly misspelled word in English?

There is no single agreed answer, because lists are based on different sources, but a few words appear near the top of almost every list: definitely, separate, accommodate, necessary, occurred and embarrass. What they share is a trap you cannot hear, such as a doubled letter or an unclear vowel. Knowing where the trap is in each word matters more than knowing its rank.

How do you remember how to spell definitely?

Look for the word finite inside it: de-finite-ly. In finite, the i is clear when you say it, and definitely keeps the same letters. That stops the common mistake "definately", which comes from spelling the unclear middle vowel by guesswork. Write it from memory a few times over the next week to make it automatic.

Is it separate or seperate?

The correct spelling is separate. A common memory trick is that there is "a rat" in separate: sep-a-rat-e. The middle vowel is hard because it is not clearly pronounced in normal speech, so the ear gives no clue. Practice writing it from memory and checking it, and return to it after a few days.

How many c's and m's are in accommodate?

Accommodate has two c's and two m's: a-c-c-o-m-m-o-d-a-t-e. The usual memory trick is that the word is big enough to accommodate both pairs of double letters. Accommodation follows the same pattern. The most common error is dropping one m, so check that part of the word in particular.

Do spelling mnemonics actually work?

They help most when they point at the exact letters that go wrong and, ideally, give a reason for them. "Recommend is re plus commend" works because it explains the letters and carries over to other words. A mnemonic alone gets the word right once, though. To keep it, you still need to practice writing the word from memory and return to it after gaps of days and weeks.

What is the best way to stop misspelling the same words?

Keep a short list of the words you personally get wrong, taken from your own writing. Practice each by writing it from memory and checking it straight away, rather than copying it. Then return to each word after a day, a few days, a week and a month. Spell-check can catch the mistakes, but only recall practice will stop you making them.

Fix the words you actually get wrong

A few minutes a day, spaced repetition, built only for spelling. Try five words without signing up.