How many poor spellers are in the USA?

Question

I know I am not the only person that is a poor speller base on the fact that just about every thing I use, has a Spell Checker. Yahoo even has a spell checker as I compose this question to be posted. Every company that I use to send an email has a spell checker, Microsoft's Word Works Processor has an auto spell checker programed in. There have been times when applying for a job, The company had all job applicants to check which one was spell correctly: (sincerely, sinecerly, or sincerly. this is just an example). There was a whole list of words & I had to check the correct spelling of each word. With so many Spell Checkers around, I know there is alot of people that don't know how to spell good. Does anyone have an estimated number? I expect the number to be in the Millions. Thank you for taking the time read & answer this question.

Answer 1

ahunderd

Answer 2

I can't give you a figure, because I don't think it's possible to estimate. However, if you look at all the postings on this site and extrapolate I think you are probably right; millions. Ufortunately and paradoxically, the proliferation of computer technology, which is a wonderful information highway, has also served to dumb down people. It has spawned it's own abbreviated spellings which are now becoming mainstream. The use of spell-check (and grammar check too) has also greatly contributed to this because it allows people to no longer having to think about spelling rules and they have become lazy and complacent. It is very similar to the introduction of calculators in schools. If you go into stores today, the cashiers have great trouble figuring out that if you don't want too much change back from, let's say $2.83 you give them $3.08, so you can get back a quarter instead of 17c. They look at you like huh?? and afterward they say, how did you know that? Duh! Because I learned to do simple & lightly moderate calculations in my head. I believe that technology is a wonderful thing and I am not advocating against it, but like anything in life, you have to learn to walk before you can run. One last point, I have taught immigrants for a long time, for whom, spelling was a nightmare but I managed to show them that you can really improve your spelling by developing better listening skills. If you listen really carefully (or even aloud in your own brain), you can probably spell over 80% of words you encounter, the other 20% not following the rules because they are assimilated into English from other languages and those mispellings are forgivable. Hope this answers your question a little.

Answer 3

This is a toughie because there would have to be a standard by which to measure what constitutes a bad speller- one misspelling in a paragraph, misspellings of three syllable words, do typos count? My opinion is that nearly 75 % of the US population spell poorly.

Answer 4

Can we narrow that down to just here on Yahoo Answers!?
I would say there are dozens, no wait - hundreds. If I were to guess - in the U.S. there are hundreds of thousands.
I particularly like the poor spellers who think 'grammar' is spelled with an 'e'.

Answer 5

The size of all those who know to read and write. Surely all of us have at one point made a spelling error. So take the population of all literate Americans and there you have the answer. Close to 200 million I presume

Answer 6

128 million

Answer 7

My guess is plenty. There are lots of easy mistakes to make. My guess is about 110.5 million.

Answer 8

probly alot i now i cant spll

Answer 9

u milliun! lol

Answer 10

their are nun