Why is “definitely” so frequently typoed?
Solution 1:
Definitely is pronounced as [dɛfɪnətli]
, where the [ə]
indicates a schwa sound. A schwa could easily be any vowel in English, so it’s easy to misspell it.
Solution 2:
Can you think of any other words that end in -itely that are pronounced the same? I think the majority of them end in -ately, e.g. alternately, indiscriminately, fortunately, intimately. Therefore, people uninterested in spelling irregularity will intuitively spell it “definately” because it seems more plausible if you don’t know better.
Edit: Just thought of one: infinitely... but it’s definitely rarer!