Commonly misspelled words where E is the culprit

E is the most-used letter in the English alphabet. It’s also the most evil. This seemingly innocent vowel comes up in 11% of words in the dictionary, leaving second-place S in its dust at 8.7%. But in my highly unscientific analysis, E comes up in a hugely disproportionate number of spelling errors — like, maybe half of them. And I’m not just talking about typos like “teh” in place of “the.” I’m talking about actual misspellings of words that confound even smart people.

Here are just some of the words that prove the letter E is out to get you: sleight, adrenaline, hoard, breathe, envelop, gray, theater, affect, lightening. And here's my recent column on how to spell them right.

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