Adieu, Dictionary: We Now Rely on Autocorrect, Spell-Check, and Google
Do you judge the spelling in texts, emails, and other digital documents? You're not alone. While 93% of Americans look up how to spell certain words (and 63% admit to misspelling the same words constantly, such as receive and restaurant), another 61% claim they judge anyone who misspells often.
Those are only a few of the findings by unscrambled words(Opens in a new window), a website that has a vested interest in spelling—its main function is as a word unscrambler, the kind of tool you'd better not be using in your Scrabble or Words with Friends games. In September, the site performed two bits of research: One was a survey of 1,051 US citizens asking about their online spelling habits. The second was a deep dive into 5,000 Google search terms from the last two years related to spelling, to see what people need help spelling on a national and state-level basis.
Most germane for us is how often people pay attention to the much-maligned autocorrect feature found on just about every mobile keyboard, many a word processor, and in email: 79% rely on it. The infographic below also shows that the vast majority of people do an extra spell-check on emails (86%), text messages (62%), and especially on documents (92%) before sending.
All that extra checking, you would think, stems from self-awareness. But when asked how often they misspell when writing or texting, most respondents actually claimed they hardly ever screw up or even have to look up words.
The most gob-smacking insight from the data may be that people don’t look up words much with a dictionary, either physical or app-based. More (36%) typically use document spell check. The majority—a staggering 92%—simply search the term. (Personally, I ask Alexa.)
The investigation
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