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Britons are 'embarased' by their spelling
A survey out today shows half of Britons unable to spell.

This fascinating fact was revealed today by a recent survey of 1,000 adults carried out by ICD Research on behalf of The Spelling Society.

1,000 people were asked to spell 10 commonly used words. The results showed that every word had been spelt wrong by somebody. More than half (54%) could not spell embarrassed, or millennium and over a quarter struggled with definitely, accidentally and separate.

There were marked regional differences in spelling acumen across the UK with the North West and the North East scoring among the top five worst regions.

Tim Hutt, from ID Factor/ICD research, said of the survey: "Some interesting differences come out within regional and social grade breaks. For example, 'embarrassed' is most likely to be spelt incorrect at 54% incorrect rate. However, 63% in the North East spelled the word wrong compared to 51% in South East and South West."

One in three people in the UK admit that they have trouble spelling  and aren't confident enough to fill out an application form without using spell check.

If you're under 35 in the UK, you're likely to be much more uncomfortable filling out an application form for a job without using spell check than your parents or the over 55 age group. 35% of under 24's are reliant on spell check as opposed to 13% of over 55's.

The survey also learned that Britons 'blame' the current state of poor spelling on parents and teachers, with 76% of Britons believing that spelling among children is worse now than it was ten years ago.

Who's to blame?

Dr John Gledhill from The Spelling Society says: "It is not the fault of the teachers, nor of the students, but of the archaic spelling system which they have to learn. We are in effect still using 16th century spelling for a 21st century language, and grammar and pronunciation have changed since then, with the written language lagging a couple of centuries behind. It's the equivalent of trying to write Italian as if it were Latin and wondering why it was difficult."

The Spelling Society celebrate their 100th birthday with a conference at Coventry University 7-8th June entitled 'The Cost of English Spelling'.  The conference will address how much time, effort, and money is spent in schools to cover the complexity of the current "traditional" English spelling system.   Dr John Gledhill says: "This conference aims to draw attention to the financial, educational and cultural costs for all levels of the English Educational system using recent research and comparisons related to the ease with which better structured orthographies in other languages are learned and taught."

Paul Mackney, former General Secretary of teachers' & lecturers' union NATFHE, commented: "Teachers, lecturers and students across the English speaking world are spending hundreds of hours a year tackling our obsolete English spelling system which could much more fruitfully and enjoyably be spent learning across the spectrum."

A whopping 69% of people voted in favour of updating 100 or so English words in order to modernize the current spelling system.

The survey results showed that, like The Spelling Society, people do have an appetite for change.  The Spelling Society, in their 100th year would like to see more awareness of the problems faced by teachers and schools.  Dr Gledhill says: "Schools aren't to blame. This is a burden not shared by most other modern languages, in which simply learning the alphabet is enough to be able to read and write. The government can help by stopping simply blaming teachers or constantly changing pedagogy, and accepting that it is the spelling system being taught that is the burden, rather than the methodology of teaching it or the attitude of learners."

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