We blame predictive text.
Ever since the day we discovered T9 – the function that anticipated which word you were trying to type on your old Nokia keypad without you having to laboriously spell the whole thing out, letter for letter – we’ve relied on technology to do our spelling for us.
Nowadays, our word-processing mistakes are highlighted by an army of squiggly red lines, while autocorrect on our smartphones renders the ability to spell nigh on obsolete (even if it isn’t always as smart as it thinks it is).
The result, however, is that most of us don’t actually know how to spell a whole host of everyday words, according to a study by market research company OnePoll.com in a survey of 3,500 Brits.
“Who cares?” you say, with a roll of the eyes and a shrug of the shoulders. “I’ll always have autocorrect to do my spelling for me.” But don’t you see? That’s exactly what the machines want you to think.
Don’t let those soulless devices devolve millennia of human communication into a series of noughts and ones – have a go at the quiz below, and take the power back into your own hands.