Interesting Facts

According to the UK’s youth programme, National Citizen Service, prospective employers spend just 8.8 seconds studying any one person’s curriculum vitae. (The research also outlined the top 10 CV faux pas: 1. Bad grammar. 2. Spelling mistakes. 3. Poor formatting. 4. CV longer than two pages. 5. Casual tone. 6. Use of jargon. 7. Unusual font style or size. 8. Exam grades listed in full. 9. Generic interests listed such as cooking or reading. 10. Lack of activities related to personal development.)

According to research carried out by Oxford University Press, British children are struggling to write “simple, everyday words”. (They are failing to spot the difference between words like “their” and “there” or “cloths” and “clothes”, to pick out silent letters or spot the difference between a single or double letter word. The top spelling error was "accidentally", closely followed by "practising", “frantically” "definitely" and "believe". Other common misspellings included words such as “surprise”, "excitement", "weird", "doesn't" and "minute”. I can see I'm going to have to add some more spelling tests to the site.)

According to best-selling author, Jacqueline Wilson, children from Eastern Europe, Spain and Portugal all have better spelling and grammar than British children. (She receives hundreds of fan letters each week, and told The Independent, that her young overseas fans write more eloquent English than UK kids, she said, "They’re writing in English, and apologising for their English, yet these letters will be more grammatical and spelt more properly than [those from] our own children! Spelling doesn’t seem to be something that happens [at school]. I don’t think it is being taught. Many children don’t even bother to try to write properly, resorting to 'text language'". I dunno wot u r tryin 2 say Jacklynn.)

According to the English Oxford Dictionary the longest English word is 'pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis'. It is 45 letters long. (I can't even pronounce it let alone spell it!!) xx Source - Wikipedia

The Spelling Society found that more than half of adults in the UK could not spell embarrassed or millennium. (A quarter struggled with definitely, accidentally and separate. The survey found that Britons blame the current state of poor spelling on parents and teachers. After the age of 21 you really should stop blaming other people.)