America Has Some Real Trouble Spelling Simple Words

Sign saying ‘We are committed to Excellense.’ Photo: Janet Fekete (Getty).

Look, I get it, some words are just hard to spell. Even I, as a professional writer, still have to use a spellchecker, if only to assure that articles like this are without misspellings, typos and grammar errors.

But there are people who just don’t get it. No matter how many times they write it, are told how to write it, or see it written in front of them, they brutally butcher the English language. Sometimes, they do it in the most unexpected of instances. Thanks to the good folks at Google, we now know that America’s got some issues when it comes to spelling even the easiest of words.

America Has Some Real Trouble Spelling Simple Words

Google Trends on Tuesday released the top searched “how to spell” words by state. The results range from understandable to how the f–k do you not know how to spell that?

Let’s take a closer look:

Photo: Google Trends

Sure, there are one’s that will demand a Google search every time, like “supercalifragilisticexpialidocious.” Nobody’s getting that one unless they watch a religious amount of Mary Poppins. I’d also give words like “pneumonia” and “diarrhea” a pass.

But when Mississippi can’t spell “nanny,” things start getting out of hand. Inexplicably, the people of Hawaii have trouble spelling “people,” while those in Wisconsin somehow don’t know how to spell their own state’s name. Flabbergasting.

Don’t worry, America. Nobody’s perfect, and we’re going to misspell things until we’re old and don’t give a shit anymore. Hell, even Google got the spelling of “ninety” wrong in the picture they published. It’s true, take a look at Maryland.

So if you want to avoid becoming a state statistic, always be sure to duble-chek your spelling.

Also: ‘Moobs’ And ‘Biatch’ Are Now Officially Words In The Oxford English Dictionary