Ot - Misspelled Word Challenge
 

Okay, since we've squeezed all the blood we can out of the stone that is "good grammar and spelling," I thought it would be interesting to turn this into a puzzle.

The challenge: Find a misspelling of a certain word that appears on the internet as the highest share of the times that the word is used.

Here is how we will measure this: partially objective, partially subjective.

-Pick a correctly-spelled word and an incorrect form of that word, which is clearly an attempt to spell that word.

-Use Google to see how many hits the word gets, and how many the misspelling gets.

-To be eligible, your correctly-spelled word must yield at least 1,000 hits -- we don't want this to turn into a battle using absurdly obscure words

-Your score = (hits for the misspelling)/[(hits for the word)+(hits for the misspelling)]

Example:
"turn" = 31,400,000 hits
"trun" = 41,400 hits
Score for "trun" = 41,400/31,441,400 = 0.13%

Yes, I am aware that this calculation ignores other potential misspellings... but I get to make the rules. So there.

In judging whether a given misspelling is "clearly" an attempt to type another word, I will use a "reasonable person" standard. If a reasonable person, in my judgment, would agree that it was clearly an attempt to spell your word, it counts. (Let's try not to make this a contest exclusively about this issue)

My general thinking is that the shorter the words, the more likely that you'll have trouble in this regard. But I don't yet have any sense of what type of words might win this contest - a rare, hard-to-spell word? Or a common word with an easy misspelling?


Enjoy.

correct: wienerschnitzel - 10,600 hits
misspelling: weinerschnitzel - 1,990 hits
score - 1,990 / 12,590 = 16%

fixed the error

That's pretty good... it comes out to 16% actually, not 0.16% - very strong.

Best I got initially has been "sacreligious" getting 9.6%.

definately - 720,000
definitely - 6,750,000

9.64% :D

How I came up with wienerschnitzel as my first word is beyond me. :)

correct: misspell - 34,700 hits
misspelling: mispell - 3,620 hits
score - 3,620 / 38,320 = 9.45%

I just looked that one up too :)

Quiksand 938
Quicksand 139,000


0.67%

correct: supersede - 266,000 hits
incorect: supercede - 75,000

28.19%


edit: just to note (not correct) the fact that I actually misspelled incorrect while typing it.

correct: Jell-O 85,100
incorrect: Jello 361,000

I hate math

just - 147,000,000
jsut - 93,200

.06%

Very low, but this is by far my most misspelled word - usually in IMs. If it's a post I can correct it.

On second thought, this is more of a typo than a misspelling.

DOLA

80.92%

DD

Here we go... not sure if it will be counted, but it was my best effort.

Correct: gangster - 679,000
Misspelled: gangsta - 415,000

37.93%

:D

anoint 5,700
annoint 3,530

3,530/5,700=.6192 or 61.92 percent

I would submit that for it to be regarded as misspelled, Google itself should offer up "Did you mean alternative".

Ewwww, horrible math by me! Correcting all posts above...

We'll score that as 38.2% - but still darned good. I wouldn't have guessed.

correct: Anrhydeddu 530
incorrect:Handydandy 412

I know, it doesn't meet the 1000 rule ...

Um, I'm getting 102,000 for 'anoint'.

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&l...=Google+Search

Hmmm... "gangsta" and "Jell-o" both ring hollow to me.

My inclination is to eliminate proper words, including trademarks. Jell-o is very clever... but I think outside the original intent.

But a deliberate misspelling seems to have its own meaning - I have to think someone writing the word "gangsta" has a different thing in mind than someone who is just making an error when trying to write "gangster."

traveling - 4,660,000
travelling - 3,230,000

40.94%

I think these two are listed as acceptable variants.

Doesn't win, but I found it interesting that Google knew it was misspelled:

Zaxon - 1,290 (some of these look to be a company's name)
Zaxxon - 17,400

Quicksand 140,000
Quiksand 950


which tells you that google does not look here or they would have 10,000 more hits.

---

Now back off my Jell-O

web page 4,620,000
webpage 3,980,000 (no such word, as I have been told)

liquefy - 30,300
liquify - 30,000
49.7%

...but M-W online also lists "liquify" as a variant. Drat.

that is so wierd, when I first searched it I got 5000, but now im getting 100,00

nevermind, I saw my mistake :)

Quiksand - 950
Kickstand - 47,700

score = misspelled / (correct + misspelled)

a lot = 5,600,000
alot = 2,460,000

2,460,000 / 8,060,000 = .3052 or 30.52%

how about

dumb 2,430,000
dum 793,000

25%

Whoops.

Correct: acapella - 73,800
Incorrect: accapella - 30,700

29.37%

"Usama bin Laden" 36,800
"Osama bin Laden" 799,000

2,171% :D

Is Usama/Osama a spelling issue, or a matter if imperfect transliteration? (I've always assumed the latter) Proper words just don't make a good fir for this, of course.

Separate: 16,800,000
Seperate: 830,000

Not nearly as bad as I thought it would be ... only 4.7%.

Dola.

It's too bad we can't do a check for improper use of there/their/they're, which I think has to be #1 all time.

correct: coolly - 135,000
incorrect: cooly - 54,700

28.8%

correct: dumbbell - 109,000
incorrect: dumbell - 38,700

26.2%

hmm.. not as good as I thought on these.

regardless - 6,080,000
irregardless - 34,900

february - 32,700,00
febuary - 134,000

congratulations - 2,860,000
congradulations - 39,900

All Right - 1,770,000
Alright - 1,610,000 (although, guess some will say alright is all right but... oh well. Aight'?)

correct: dalmatian - 163,000
incorrect: dalmation - 63,700

28.1%

I can't seem to break 30%...

Favre: 284,000
Farve: 186,000

39.6%

2/3 - 8,830,000
1/2 - 9,390,000


Sorry.. couldn't resist

Correct- solder - 622000
Incorrect- sauder - 130000

17.3%

Off because Sauder is a furniture company...

Correct: Leafs (441,000)
Incorrect: Leaves (9,490,000)

95.5% ... I win!

(What? It is? Really? Oh. Never mind.)

QS - please come up with a metric to rate how far off the spelling is.

For example, here are the google scores of one I found today.

acceptable 8,130,000
exceptable 4690

A paltry 0.06% - not 6% or .06, but 0.06% or 5.7*10^-4

And I imagine many of those incorrect were typos or misspellings for expectable. But, there is one guy (teen, I hope) on the SWG boards comlaining that the first patch introduced unexceptable changes.

I would put this up in any contest for quality of misspelling rather than mere quantity.

very interesting quest/game posting =)

solecistic 286
Solecismic 1920

87.0%

m&m 459,000
eminem 2,310,000

83.4%
Intentional misspellings and puns don't count, I know.

Comlaining: 488
Complaining: 1,280,000

Score: .04%

Ah well.

Kevin