Looking for Leprechauns in Arkansas

With the convenience of electronics in our culture, finding the correct spelling of a particular word is not like it used to be. Gone are the days of looking it up in a dictionary that is housed on your parents’ bookshelf. Does anyone still own a dictionary? Today, even elementary aged students know that all it takes to find an answer is simply to “Google it.” Google, the noun, is now also commonly used as a verb. I wonder if that’s in the dictionary.

Last spring, Google Trends released a fun report that revealed the most misspelled words in each state in 2016, according to Google searches. The search perimeters all began with the phrase “how to spell,” followed by the word requested. The most searched words are labeled in this handy map:

 The most common misspelled word was “desert,” followed by “gray,” “vacuum” and “pneumonia.” As you can see, Arkansans have trouble with “leprechaun,” but we aren’t alone; it was also the top searched word in Utah. Seems fitting since St. Patrick’s Day is coming up soon. So before you turn gray from pneumonia, go get a leprechaun to vacuum for you and head to the desert for vacation.

Here is a link to the full story from Time magazine.