[The Soup Nazi]

A Washington Post article from last week on some Google shenanigans:

[...] Google decided to see what words people in each of the 50 states struggle to spell.

To do this, employees looked at Google searches of "how to spell ______" in each of the states from Jan. 1 to April 30 this year. Whatever word filled that blank most often in each state became denoted as that state's "most misspelled word."

The results may not be scientific, but they sure were amusing.

 

The list:

• Alabama: pneumonia
• Alaska: schedule
• Arizona: tomorrow
• Arkansas: chihuahua
• California: beautiful
• Colorado: tomorrow
• Connecticut: supercalifragilisticexpialidocious
• Delaware: hallelujah
• Washington, D.C.: ninety
• Florida: receipt
• Georgia: gray
• Hawaii: people
• Idaho: quote
• Illinois: appreciate
• Indiana: hallelujah
• Iowa: vacuum
• Kansas: diamond
• Kentucky: beautiful
• Louisiana: giraffe
• Maine: pneumonia
• Maryland: special
• Massachusetts: license
• Michigan: pneumonia
• Minnesota: beautiful
• Mississippi: nanny
• Missouri: maintenance
• Montana: surprise
• Nebraska: suspicious
• Nevada: available
• New Hampshire: diarrhea
• New Jersey: twelve
• New Mexico: bananas
• New York: beautiful
• North Carolina: angel
• North Dakota: dilemma
• Ohio: beautiful
• Oklahoma: patient
• Oregon: sense
• Pennsylvania: sauerkraut
• Rhode Island: liar
• South Carolina: chihuahua
• South Dakota: college
• Tennessee: chaos
• Texas: maintenance
• Utah: disease
• Vermont: Europe
• Virginia: delicious
• Washington: pneumonia
• West Virginia: supercalifragilisticexpialidocious
• Wisconsin: Wisconsin
• Wyoming: priority

[!@#$%!]

nu-messico can't spell banana? do they put a double "n" like bannana? or bananna? cuz with one "n" it could conceivably be pronounced "banaina".

dc misspells ninety? i would have bet my shirt that it was fifty (spelled "fitty," as we say). wonder about it now. "nighty" (like eighty)?

[ilduclo]

Is spell "cents"

[Severian]

Why the fuck is "pneumonia" such an issue? From coast the coast (and Midwest), north to south. What the what?

Also, Wisconsin can't spell Wisconsin?

Not sure I fully trust the methodology here. Using Google as a predictor is problematic. I don't think many people learn how to spell something by searching "How to spell..." and then attempting to spell that word. What a backasswards way of doing things.

Anyway, when I do look up spellings, I usually do so to satisfy someone whose writing I'm proofing — basically to settle an argument. In those cases the person who doesn't know how to spell doesn't do the searching. Of course, that's totally anecdotal and non-generalizable, but still.

Still what?
Still crazy after all these years.