New York’s Most Misspelled Word Might Surprise You

A new study looked at Google searches to find the most commonly misspelled words in every state, and New York’s top word for 2026 is “judgement.” The funny thing is that the correct American spelling is actually “judgment” without the extra “e.” A lot of people get it wrong including me.

America Has Trouble Spelling Some Common Words

The study was done by the word experts at Unscramblerer.com. They looked at searches like “how do you spell” from January through May 2026. Across the United States, the most searched misspelled word was “bougie.”

Other words people struggled with included “favorite,” “through,” “business,” and “tomorrow.” It makes sense, too. English can be really confusing with silent letters, weird vowel sounds, and words that just don’t sound the way they’re spelled.

New York Wasn’t the Only State Struggling

Pennsylvania struggled with “maintenance.” New Jersey searched “because” the most. Massachusetts had trouble with “schedule,” and people in Connecticut had a hard time spelling “recommend.” Georgia and Oklahoma were both trying to figure out how to spell “chihuahua,” which is honestly a tough one.

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Is Technology Making Spelling Harder?

Researchers say autocorrect and AI might actually be making people worse at spelling because we depend on them so much now. Still, there’s a good side to it. Every time you stop and look up how to spell a word, you learn something new. So if you still pause before typing words like “definitely” or “separate,” don’t worry. A lot of people do the same thing.