Do you have to double-check with Google to know if the word “canceled” has one l or two, or if the “i” goes before the “e” in the word “field?” Many of us do, after all English is a tricky language and spelling isn’t always easy. It turns out, a lot of Americans struggle to spell commonly used words and new research reveals which ones they have the hardest time with.
In honor of the Scripps National Spelling Bee finals last week, Google has come out with their annual list of the words that each state struggles to spell. They analyzed the top “How to spell” searches in each state over the last year and found:
- Nine states were searching most for words with 11 or more letters, including “strawberries” in Idaho.
- Two states - Wisconsin and Virginia - had the most searches for words with only four letters, “ally” in Wisconsin and “said” in Virginia.
- Pennsylvanians looked up how to spell “mountain” most, while Hawaii had the hardest time spelling the name of the country “Philippines.”
- In Texas, they looked up how to spell “physique” most and in Arkansas it was the word “exercise.”
- Some states were confused by how to spell the name of other states, including Maryland, where the most searched-for spelling was “Pennsylvania,” while Nebraska was unsure about how to spell “California” and Utah struggled with “Mississippi.”
- Californians searched the most for how to spell “pretty,” while those in Mississippi looked up the word “nervous.”
- In both North Carolina and Arizona, the top spelling search was the military rank “colonel.”
- Taylor Swift’s latest album, “The Tortured Poets Department” may be why New Hampshire searched for the word “tortured” most in the last year.
- New Yorkers were most confused by how to spell “aesthetic,” while their neighbors in New Jersey looked up “experienced” most often.
Source: Google Trends