Tech reliance weakens SA’s spelling skills

Is it color or colour?

Well there seem to be thousands of South Africans asking that same question according to recent Google search data for the most misspelt words in SA.

Research conducted by word unscrambling experts at WordUnscrambler.pro. revealed that words including license, favourite and queue were among the many variations of misspelling searches.

“Surprisingly most South Africa’s misspelled words searched are not errors in spelling but alternative standard forms of British vs American English. We found that many searches revolved around how to spell words in Canada, America, UK and Australia,” the company said in a statement.

“Words like colour, favourite, neighbour and honour reflect British English spellings, while their American counterparts (color, favorite, neighbor, honor) are also correct.

“People seem to be unsure which spelling standard to use in formal English.”

It said the reliance on technology is among the factors contributing to spelling becoming less accurate

“Several commonly searched words like because, queue, weird, business and surprise are frequently misspelled because English spelling does not consistently match pronunciation.

“Then there are tricky words like ‘queue’ (contains silent letters and an unusual vowel pattern) and ‘weird’ (breaks the common ‘i before e’ rule).

“Availability of autocorrect in all devices results in misspelling common words. Studies suggest heavy reliance on autocorrect weakens spelling skills over time. Some researchers call it digital amnesia. We simply forget things that we delegate to technology.

“Misspellings might be on the rise not because we know less, but because we need to know less.”

The search data extends from January 1, 2025 to December 17, 2025.

“We used Google Trends to discover the most misspelled words and Ahrefs to find the number of searches. South Africa’s most misspelled words can be discovered in Google Trends by searching for ‘How do you spell’ and ‘How to spell’.

“Ahrefs shows many variations of misspelling searches like ‘spell colour’ or ‘how do I spell license’.

“We added up 120 search variations of top spelling searches.”