‘Susan Boil’, ‘Swan Flu’, ‘Brack Obama’ among most common Internet misspellings
By ANITuesday, June 30, 2009
LONDON - “Susan Boil”, “Rod Steward”, “Swan Flu”, “Brack Obama” and “Paperview boxing” are among the top misspelled words typed into the internet, it has been disclosed.
The goof-ups are on a list of frequent errors made by users of Yahoo!, the second biggest search engine.
Most engines scan for possible misspellings of common words and suggest corrections with a “Did you mean…” message at the top of the results page, reports The Telegraph.
“These things jump out at us, especially when there is a breaking news story and (Yahoo! users) want to follow up on a story,” Vera Chan, editor of Yahoo Buzz, told USA Today.
“It’s interesting to see the different variations of these spellings,” Chan added.
Common recent spelling errors on Yahoo!
Swan Flu (for Swine Flu)
Susan Boil (for Susan Boyle)
Brack Obama (for Barack Obama)
Paperview boxing (for pay-per-view boxing)
Amtrack (for the US train system Amtrak)
Wallmart (for retailer Wal-Mart)
Farrah Faucet (for actress Farrah Fawcett)
Rod Steward (for singer Rod Stewart)
“Dancing With the Starts” (for Dancing With the Stars)
Brittany Spears (for singer Britney Spears)
Configure worm (for computer virus Conficker worm)
Mysapce (for MySpace) (ANI)
