Home > News > These are the ten most common spelling mistakes among students Confusing ‘to see’ and ‘to have’, exchanging letters that sound the same or forgetting to use accent marks are some of the most frequent mistakes that experts at the editorial RUBIO find in the writing of children and young people.
‘Olaaa, how are you?’, ‘I miss you’ or even ‘see you later, bss’ are messages that are becoming more and more common in social networks and message groups of many people. What do they have in common? All three have numerous misspellings and grammatical errors. In the case of children and adolescents, considered digital natives, they are not so familiar with handwriting, so they are guided by the oral code, that is, they write as the words sound. If we add to this the immediacy of writing on social networks and the use of autocorrect on digital devices, many of them may have less mastery of spelling rules.
The ten most common misspellings
The pedagogues of the RUBIO publishing house have compiled the 10 most common misspellings among children and adolescents.
Confusion between ‘to see’ and ‘to have’. They sound the same, but they don’t mean the same thing. While ‘to see’ is a combination of two words (a preposition and the verb ‘to see’), ‘to have’ is a single infinitive verb.
Incorrect use of ‘h’. Although silent, the letter ah can change the meaning of a word. For this reason, it is important to know that the expression ‘echar de menos’ does not have it, but in the verbal form ‘has gone’ it should be put.
Swap the letters ‘b’ and ‘v’. This is another letter that can change the meaning of a word. For example, while VAT is the Value Added Tax, ‘iba’ is the conjugated verb to go (in the first or third person singular) of the preterite imperfect in the indicative mood.
Incorrect abbreviations. The reasons for shortening words are various, from saving time to sticking to the characters allowed in some applications or social networks. The most frequent ones are using ‘q’ instead of ‘que’, ‘tmb’ to replace ‘also’ or ‘sq’ replacing ‘es que’.
A misuse of ‘g’ and ‘j’. Especially when they come before the ‘e’ and the ‘i’, the use of these consonants generates many doubts, coming to see words like ‘language’ instead of ‘language’ or ‘concierge’ instead of ‘concierge’.
Poorly conjugated imperatives. It is very common to see phrases like ‘Please come to class’ or ‘when you arrive, go up to my house’. Students should be reminded that these imperatives end with a ‘d’ and not an ‘r’, ie ‘come to class’ and ‘come up to my house’.
Why, why or why? It is another of the most frequent mistakes among young people, which can be further aggravated by abbreviating the word to ‘xq’. It is important to review the meaning of the sentence to know which is the correct form.
Ignore the punctuation marks. Although, in other languages, such as English, only the question mark or exclamation mark is used at the end of the sentence, it should be remembered that in Spanish it must also be used at the beginning. This confusion also exists in other punctuation marks, such as periods, commas, parentheses, or quotation marks.
Forgotten ticks. The use of accents is essential to indicate the pronunciation of each word, marking the stressed syllable of the same, but they are also used on some occasions to differentiate words that are written the same. An example would be the words ‘public’, ‘public’ and ‘published’.
Write proper nouns in lowercase. Despite being one of the most basic rules of Spanish spelling, it is very common to see the proper names of people or places written in lowercase. For this reason, students must be reminded that María is written with a capital letter and Mediterranean as well.
