The mumbled vowel crowd deserves its own spotlight. English speakers squash unstressed vowels into a vague uh sound, so the spelling turns into a guessing game. That is how definitely becomes definately all over the internet, although remembering that finite is hiding inside it helps.
Separate suffers the same fate because the middle gets said so mushily that seperate feels right, until you remember that separate has a rat hiding in the middle. Accommodate has a different problem, since it demands two Cs and two Ms, which is a lot of letters for one word to accommodate. Embarrass also asks for two Rs and two Ss, which feels fitting for a word about blushing. Dictionary.com’s list of commonly misspelled words covers these with handy memory tricks.
Borrowed words cause their own chaos. Pearson’s roundup of commonly misspelled words includes liaison, which arrived from French with a tangle of vowels, so liasion keeps sneaking in. Espresso comes from an Italian word meaning pressed out, but plenty of people assume it has something to do with speed and write expresso.
Add in everyday disasters like alot, which is simply a lot with its space deleted, and the mix ups between your and you’re or loose and lose, and the internet has a steady supply of material. Almost every odd spelling is a fossil of an old pronunciation, a Latin makeover or a typesetter in a hurry, which should make everyone a little more sympathetic.
