Here’s a little game to play: google a common word. Make a note of the count on the upper right side of the search results page. Call that y. Now, google for a misspelling of that same word. Call it’s result count x.
The ratio
x/y
can be called the World Wide “Web Misspelling Ratio”. We can express it as a percentage, and call it wemiss for short, pronounced like maybe how Marlon Brandon might say, “You are wemiss in not using a spelling checker on your web pages.”
What words have the highest wemiss measure? Searching for a few of my pet peeves, I’ve found:
recieved/received: 7,720,000 / 172,000,000 = 4.49 %
such as, “Blogger Billy recieved his spell checker software today, but hasn’t used it yet.”
harrass/harass: 465,000/2,150,000 = 21.63
embarassing/embarrassing: 1,350,000/6,600,000 = 20.45%
As in, “it should be embarassing for web authors to make spelling errors on the web for all to see”.
harrass/harass: 465,000/2,150,000 = 21.63%
“I really don’t won’t to harrass all those poor spellers on the web, but sometimes I’m compelled to say something”.
And now, for the most ironic misspelling of all:
mispell/misspell: 293,000 / 326,000 = 89.88 % WOW!
