Tiny little keyboards and eyes over fifty are not a good mix.

Once my friends found out I’m an editor, they all stopped texting me, so I’ll have to go back through my text messages to find the most commonly misspelled words. I told them I wouldn’t send their text back to them marked up with a red pen, but they didn’t believe me I guess. Or maybe I just don’t have any friends . . .

Top 5 Misspelled Text Message Words

My five most common misspelled words when texting are:

1. Tgats. That’s that’s. Not reaching quite far enough to get the h and catching the g instead.

2. Alright. I know all right is two words. Really!

3. Im. Relying too much on spell-check to insert the apostrophe, and text font not having “feet,” makes this look like a lowercase L and an m instead of I’m.

4. Vefan. I was catching up with someone after a few months and explained that I was now a happy vefan. He asked, “What’s a vefan?” I had to admit it’s a vegan with fat thumbs. Once again, not reaching quite far enough for the g and catching the f instead.

5. Number five isn’t a word..  it’s punctuation. Double dots. Really, couldn’t be just one, a regular period. Couldn’t be three, suspension points. Has to be two, so everyone knows I made a mistake. Well, if anyone actually read my text messages anyway…

The cure for this latest of society’s ills, the misspelled text message? Wear your glasses, read twice, and press send once.

Originally posted 5/5/2015 and happily updated 10/26/2017. Thanks for reading!