Timed to the annual Scripps National Spelling Bee, Google Trends has released a list of the words that confound each state, based on the term users most frequently use at the end of a sentence that begins with “how to spell…”
The #spellingbee starts soon! Here is a #map of America's top spelling searches for 2019.#spelling #DataViz pic.twitter.com/cel2IAMXcV
— GoogleTrends (@GoogleTrends) May 24, 2019
And if the results might dismay English teachers (eight different states, including Virginia, were tripped up by “beautiful”), the map might also fascinate sociologists. Louisiana, for instance, was most curious about the spelling of “indict.” New York wanted to know about “bougie.” Long-suffering Pennsylvania had “pneumonia.” More disturbingly, Alabama and Mississippi, for reasons we can only hope are unrelated, spellchecked “niece” and “fifteen.” Perhaps most bafflingly, Hawaii was eager to learn how to spell….”Hawaii.”
But the best search in the country, in our humble opinion, was right here in Our Nation’s Capital, where DC’s top spelling query was “Enough.” Enough! Yes! What a perfect word for this moment in history, with its trolls and its influencers and its overpriced cocktails. Michigan’s “amazing” and Nebraska’s “delicious” may be fine aspirations, but DC nailed it. Good for us. I mean, we really ought to know how to spell the word without any help from Google. But still.
