The Most Looked Up Words in BU’s Five Key Feeder States Suggest Why We Have Spell-Check
The most spell-checked words, including in BU’s five key feeder states
Google Trends created this map with the most spell-checked word in each state. Graphic courtesy of Google Trends
Can You Spell “West Virginia”? Many in the Mountain State Need Help with It
The most spell-checked words, including in BU’s five key feeder states
America has a pandemic. Not that one—we’re referring to the outbreak of bad spelling.
Google Trends surfed “how do you spell…” searches made in all 50 states and Washington, D.C., to discover which word flummoxed the most people in each. Axios summarized the results: “There are some doozies across our great nation.” (The illustrations accompanying this story show Google Trends’ most searched-for words in the five biggest feeder states for BU’s Class of 2026.)
Any honest writer treads humbly when discussing poor spelling, and in fairness, how many of us wouldn’t need help with “boutonniere,” which trips up Utahans? Head-scratching over homonyms may explain the difficulty with “their” up there in New Hampshire; “gray” may perplex Vermont spellers because of our British cousins’ preference for “grey.” But West Virginia’s biggest baffler—“West Virginia”—had Axios snarking about the Mountain State’s “scholars.”
State stock photos by bgblue/iStockimages
The Axios editors shouldn’t feel smug. “The Writing Program admin team and staff have been amusing ourselves by confessing to words we still misspell. Nobody’s perfect,” says Sarah Madsen Hardy, a College of Arts & Sciences master lecturer and director of the Writing Program. “I don’t worry at all about BU students’ spelling ability. Since it’s become so easy to check, spelling errors signal haste or carelessness more than anything else.”
State stock photos by bgblue/iStockimages
Bad spelling even changed Hardy’s life for the better: “Back in the 1980s, I was matched with my college roomie-friend-for-life because I wrote on my housing application that I like people who are bad spellers, and she wrote that she wanted a roommate who could spell.”
Today, she’d have lots of potential roommates.
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