Tom Bergeron Hosts Scripps National Spelling Bee on Fri., May 30 . But 40% of the Viewers Can't Spell

Business Wire,  May 27, 2008  

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Over one fourth of adults watching the Championship Round of the Scripps National Spelling Bee on Friday, May 30 on ABC can't spell everyday words, such as 'calendar', 'embarrass' or 'definitely', according to a survey by WhiteSmoke, Inc., headquartered in Wilmington, DE

WILMINGTON, Del. -- While most of us don't expect to know the spelling of 'serrefine' - the word Evan O'Dorney spelled correctly to claim last year's championship - everyday words such as 'definitely' and 'questionnaire' stumped nearly 40% of adults in a recent survey.

Adults also misspelled 'calendar', 'embarrass', 'questionnaire' and 'liaison' in a random survey and spelling test of 18-60 year-olds by WhiteSmoke Inc., developers of a turbocharged writing engine that relies on patented language processing technology to check spelling, grammar and punctuation in context.

In the WhiteSmoke survey, 'referring' also left 28% of the 2,500 participants scratching their heads, according to the English language grammar and writing software firm whose product also enhances writing by suggesting synonyms, adjectives and adverbs (www.whitesmoke.com).

Emmy Award-winning Tom Bergeron ("Dancing with the Stars" and "America's Funniest Home Videos") will host live television coverage of contestants age 8-15 in the final championship rounds of "The 2008 Scripps National Spelling Bee," FRIDAY, MAY 30, 8-10 p.m., ET, live from Washington, DC.

Preliminary championship rounds will on ESPN. ESPN's live telecast is scheduled for 11 a.m.- 2 p.m., ET. ESPN360.com will cover the quarterfinals from 2-5:30 p.m., ET on Thursday, May 29 on ESPN 360.com.

In the survey, adults were shown 20 words and asked to pick out the correct spelling. 'Calendar' was misspelled by 19 percent of people, 20 percent were clueless when it came to spelling 'embarrass' and 'referring' drew blanks from 28 percent. Another 38 percent had no idea how to spell 'definitely'.

Almost a third were stumped by the spelling of 'liaison' and 40 percent got 'questionnaire' wrong, followed by 'accommodate,' which was misspelled 38 percent of the time. Even 'receive' was misspelled by 15 percent of respondents.

When asked why their spelling was not up to par, two-thirds blamed technology -- especially mobile phone predictive spelling and text speak abbreviations such as CUL for see you later.

The complete test is available at www.whitesmoke.com.

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