While looking for something else, this morning I stumbled over a Business Wire story about a survey conducted by WhiteSmoke, a software developer specializing in writing and grammar tools:

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.

It's all quite pathetic, particularly when you take into account the eyebrow-raising fact that, unlike the brave contestants in this year's Scripps National Spelling Bee who actually have to spell each word, the survey respondents were given a choice of just three spellings and were asked to select the correct one. A Rhesus monkey could get at least 33% correct in that kind of "test." Ah, but here's the kicker:

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 CUL8TR for see you later.

Hah! I'll bet those same two-thirds also "blame technology" when they run out of milk (stupid refrigerator!) or when they oversleep (stupid alarm clock that doesn't set itself).