‘Missing u (and e) in Bornmouth’

BOURNEMOUTH might be popular for its golden beaches, artificial reef and raucous nightlife – but many Britons can’t even spell the name of the town, according to a survey by a hotel chain.

Along with Morecambe, Torquay and Scarborough, Bournemouth is the most commonly misspelled town in Britain, with a fifth of adults spelling it Bornmouth.

Approximately 20 per cent of Travelodge’s daily bookings are for places that are misspelled, which is what prompted the company to conduct its very own spelling test on 5,000 Britons.

Dr John Gledhill, from the Spelling Society, acknowledges that some places in Britain can be tricky to spell.

“Correctly spelling a location can be more difficult, because a place name may be a preservation of an old spelling that would have made sense when the place was named, but has little bearing on life today.

“The spellings could represent a pronunciation from any century from 1066 onwards that just happens to have stuck. Spelling these variants with their ancient roots is difficult, and often has little link with common sense.”

However, with the likes of Brighton, Gateshead and The Cotswolds in the top 20 of misspelled place names in the UK, some argue there are no excuses.

“Those are all very basic words aren’t they?” says Dr Andrew Norman, an author from Lilliput, Poole. “If you’d said somewhere like Aberystwyth, I could have understood.”

Dr Norman adds that when he was at school, spelling was drilled into students from a very early age. “Spelling was very important in my day – you would never have got through your O-levels if you didn’t know how to spell,” he says. “I’m from an older generation, and that’s how it was.”

Although spelling classes might not be quite so regimented these days, it is still a key element on the National Curriculum. So where is it all going wrong?

Part of the reason could be an increase in the use of computers, with spell-checkers and the internet coming into play. As comedian Russell Brand pointed out on his most recent tour: “I don’t like Google’s attitude. It’s a little bit smug isn’t it? If you make one little spelling mistake, it says, ‘Didn’t you mean?’ in sarcastic italics.”

Dr Norman warns about such tools: “People depend on machines now, but sooner or later they’ll be caught out.”

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