Top 5: Words I Usually Misspell

As a former English major, I really should know better than to have bad grammar. The other day I used the wrong "to" in a text message and twice this afternoon I've typed "no" instead of "know." I don't know what's happening to me, maybe I need to take some remedial spelling tests or something? Despite my recent failure to communicate, there have always been some words that I consistently spell incorrectly (I'm sure everyone has a similar list, even if they don't like to admit it). These are the five words that I have to look up in the dictionary the most.


5. Misspell 
Seriously, I had to look it up before I titled this post because I can never remember how many S's are in it. The worst part is that the reason I always misspell it is that I once read that it is a commonly confused word, and they explained that rather than compounding miss + spell into "missspell" or "miss-spell" it has one less S, as in "misunderstand." Therefore I always try to give it less S's and end up with "mispell," which means nothing.

4. Receipt
Who decided it was a good idea to put silent letters in words? Words like "aisle," "knife," "gnarl" and "chord" have too many consonants, to the bane of schoolchildren taking spelling tests worldwide. What good does putting that "g" on the front of "gnarl" do besides make it look cooler? It has absolutely no effect on the sound. And the word "receipt" is extra tricky, with a silent letter AND and "E" before an "I." That's just uncalled for.

3. Ridiculous
Sometimes I wish that English had a different letter for every single sound in our language. I know we would probably end up with 47 letters with weird accents and notations, but it sure would make pronunciation easier. I always try to spell this "rediculous" because I associate the "rid-" spelling with long i sounds like the word "ride." I propose we adopt the phonetic spellings that come after words in the dictionary and start using things like upside-down e's in everyday writing.

2. License 
I don't know who made up this stupid word. It's probably Latin, which would explain the awkward spelling. For some reason it uses an "s" and a "c" to represent the same sound in the same word, just to make things more confusing. It typically takes me a couple of tries (lisence, licensce, licence) before I land on the right one. Can't we just call it a permit?

1. Recieved Received
Never fail, every single time I type that word I do it wrong. I know that "I" goes before "E" except after "C" - the phrase was drilled into me during elementary spelling lessons - but for the life of me I cannot remember it when I'm trying to write the word. Who made up that rule, anyway? I think that since my name (Wesleigh) is one of the "... and on certain occasions" that "E" can come before "I" I subconsciously believe that it is the correct way to arrange the letters. Or at least that's what I tell myself.