Being a data nerd (as Spawned podcast listeners well know), every so often I find myself down the rabbit hole of Google Trends, a super interesting — if somewhat frightening — look at just what the world is searching for day to day. And with this being National Spelling Bee week (whoo!) Google provided this dandy — if somewhat frightening — list ofAmerica’s top misspelled words by state.
Did I mention I’m also a word nerd?
Now at first glance I think okay, I get Georgia’s top search; it’s hard to know if it’s grey or gray. (Answer: both are acceptable, though gray is preferred in the U.S.) I am a little concerned that in Idaho, quote is a challenging word to spell. Or that in North Carolina, there may be some confusion between angle and angel.
(Then again, my own fourth-grader has problems with that still so I’ll give them a pass.)
We can also leap to some fun assumptions from the results. Like maybe I should stay away from New Hampshire for a while. Along with Michigan, Alabama and Washington State, come to think of it.
I’d also love to imagine that Connecticut is rife with end-of-year school productions of Mary Poppins — and similarly, Arizona is big on Annie right now.
Ha.
The thing is, it’s easy to make fun of some of these spelling search results. But I’d like to think of it as encouraging. At least people are searching for proper spellings at all, right?
Better than going through life thanking your lucky angles.
