Sub-team leader Francesca Kennedy Wallbank became the fifth candidate to be fired from BBC TV show The Apprentice this week. She made a glaring spelling mistake in the title of her team’s video game.
While quibbling over the game’s title – Artic Saviour or Artic Mission – none of the contestants noticed they’d confused a continent (the arctic) with shorthand for an articulated lorry (artic).
Lost credibility
The embarrassing spelling mistake led to derision on social media with one viewer tweeting, “How the heck are these people supposed to be effective business owners when they can’t spell?”
This was just the worst of several errors that included designing a worthy but boring game and setting it in the wrong continent. As team leader Brittany Carter remarked, “We’re supposed to be, like, educating people and we haven’t spelt ‘arctic’ right.”
Don’t be like Francesca! If correct spelling doesn’t come naturally to you, consider outsourcing your marketing communications to a professional copywriter like me.
Common spelling mistakes
In the meantime, you might find it helpful to check your writing against this list of commonly misspelt words:
Correct spelling |
Common misspelling |
| Accommodate, accommodation | accomodate, accomodation |
| Achieve | acheive |
| Across | accross |
| Aggressive, aggression | agressive, agression |
| Apparently | apparantly |
| Appearance | appearence |
| Argument | arguement |
| Assassination | assasination |
| Basically | basicly |
| Beginning | begining |
| Believe | beleive, belive |
| Bizarre | bizzare |
| Business | buisness |
| Calendar | calender |
| Caribbean | Carribean |
| Cemetery | cemetary |
| Chauffeur | chauffer |
| Colleague | collegue |
| Coming | comming |
| Committee | commitee |
| Completely | completly |
| Conscious | concious |
| Curiosity | curiousity |
| Definitely | definately |
| Dilemma | dilemna |
| Disappear | dissapear |
| Disappoint | dissapoint |
| Ecstasy | ecstacy |
| Embarrass | embarass |
| Environment | enviroment |
| Existence | existance |
| Fahrenheit | farenheit |
| Familiar | familar |
| Finally | finaly |
| Fluorescent | florescent or floresant |
| Foreign | foriegn |
| Foreseeable | forseeable |
| Forty | fourty |
| Forward | foward |
| Friend | freind |
| Further | futher |
| Gist | jist |
| Glamorous | glamourous |
| Government | goverment |
| Guard | gaurd |
| Happened | happend or happenned |
| Harass, harassment | harrass or harrassment |
| Honorary | honourary |
| Humorous | humourous |
| Idiosyncrasy | idiosyncracy |
| Immediately | immediatly |
| Incidentally | incidently |
| Independent | independant |
| Interrupt | interupt |
| Irresistible | irresistable |
| Knowledge | knowlege |
| Liaise, liaison | liase, liason |
| Lollipop | lollypop or lolipop |
| Millennium, millennia | millenium, millenia |
| Neanderthal | neandertal |
| Necessary | neccessary |
| Noticeable | noticable |
| Occasion | ocassion or occassion |
| Occurred, occurring | occured, occuring |
| Occurence | occurance or occurence |
| Pavilion | pavillion |
| Persistent | persistant |
| Pharaoh | pharoah |
| Piece | peice |
| Politician | politican |
| Portuguese | Portugese |
| Possession | posession |
| Preferred, preferring | prefered, prefering |
| Propaganda | propoganda |
| Publicly | publically (or amusingly, pubically) |
| Really | realy |
| Receive | recieve |
| Referred, referring | refered, refering |
| Religious | religous |
| Remember | remeber |
| Resistance | resistence |
| Sense | sence |
| Separate | seperate |
| Siege | seige |
| Successful | succesful, sucessful or sucessfull |
| Supersede | supercede |
| Surprise | suprise |
| Tattoo | tatoo |
| Tendency | tendancy |
| Therefore | therefor |
| Threshold | threshhold |
| Tomorrow | tommorow, tommorrow |
| Tongue | tounge |
| Truly | truely |
| Unforeseen | unforseen |
| Unfortunately | unfortunatly |
| Until | untill |
| Weird | wierd |
| Wherever | whereever |
| Which | wich |
