Why do so many people misspell simple words?

Question

A lot of people misspell such simple words. For instance, they forget to drop the "e" before adding "ing" and often misuse "their", "there", and "they're". Do these people not pay attention in English class or are they just that careless?

These are full-blooded Americans that do this. It just baffles me that people can be that careless when spelling.

Answer 1

There's a lot of reasons for this. Some people aren't as intelligent as others and are therefore more likely to forget about the spelling of particular words. Some people (like me) are just "bad spellers". But the English language is an extremely difficult one in terms of spelling rules, exceptions, silent letters, etc. It's only natural for even native speakers to make mistakes.

Answer 2

This really used to annoy me also, and with the spell check to help out I could think of no reason for it.
Then I made the mistake of taking the pis* out of a question that was barely legible.
I received a private e mail from this guy (which was also barely legible) I ploughed my way through it and it turned out this guy was apologizing and explaining that he had severe learning difficulties and was trying to overcome them by joining 'the group'!!!!
I was mortified, what a complete DHd I was, I emailed back and admitted I was in the wrong, I apologised in return, and I certainly wont make that mistake again, I am still squiming at the very thought of it.

Answer 3

Perhaps they are just free spirits, yes? Non-conformists. If I don't watch it I will spell the same word differently within the same paragraph. I even took remedial spelling in college and try to spell correctly.
Usually I bow to convention and run spell check -but every once in a while I like to let my creative spelling have free reign. (i before e except after c or when it sounds a like neighbor and weigh....)
Cheers!

Answer 4

Fast typing. Happens to me all the time and I'm an excelllent speller. There's some common mis-cues in the brain after years of typing, you almost get dislexic. I'm contstantly typing thre for there. Don't worry about it.

Answer 5

like stated earlier non native speakers play some part in that, also nowadays in school they barely teach english grammar. If to compare I think I know more spanish grammar than english simply b/c in my spanish classes it's one of the things they teach, unlike english classes; all we do there is read stories and analyze them, few essays but barely and thats about it.

Answer 6

i do not ignore that this is the 'in' ingredient with the present technology it is popping out to be up. even though it really is stressful. it really is a perversion of the English language and disrespectful to others. Watch the movie, 'Idiocracy' (rated R), and word what is going to ensue in case you do not cut back it out.

Answer 7

Do remember that this is a big world, with many countries and even more languages............ and all these people are welcome to join Yahoo Answers.

So........... maybe people make minor mistakes because English is not their first language.

In how many languages can you spell without making a single mistake? See?

Answer 8

Maybe both.

People in my English class (honors) can't spell some stuff.

Answer 9

Chill out! You might how to forget words sometimes too. We are HUMAN! We are supposed to make mistakes. We are not perfect!

Answer 10

maybe they are no native speakers and just don´t know when to use which word...