I used to think that honey was spelled Hunny like the way Winnie the Pooh spelled it. Unfortunately I lost the spelling bee because of it.

Really Pooh?

Not long after when I first learnt to write, I believed that because I was left handed, and everyone else used their opposite hand, that I had to write the opposite way (all my letters were backwards, and I wrote right to left across the page)

Apparently I would hand in my work written backwards, and when the teacher failed to understand what on earth it said, I would happily read it out as if it were normal.

Megan

I used to believe as a child that a Communist and a Columnist were closely related, even one and the same.

Elaine M. Downey

When I was about four years old, I remember exclaiming to my mother that I could spell my first word. Excitedly I told her "I can spell relief... R O L A I D S." (from a popular TV ad at the time)

My mother was so amused by this that she didn't bother correcting me. I continued to demonstrate my feat to other relatives until I finally found someone willing to end my blissful ignorance.

Joe

I have always been a notoriously bad speller even though I was a straight A honors kid (which was pretty hard to pull off before the days of spell checker.) I would have to rely on people helping me to spell but there was one word that frustrated me. I would ask a million times if "title" had two 't's" in it and everyone would say yes. Yet whenever I wrote "tiTTle" I would be marked down for spelling.

michelle

For the most part, I was always a good speller, but I refused to believe that "etalics" was spelled with an I instead of an E. I got in an argument with my mom about that.

Aretia (This is written in Etalics, isn't it?)

my mom used to say you spell Mississippi M-I-crooked letter-crooked letter i-crooked letter-crooked letter-i-hump back-hump back-i so when i wrote it in school it was really long and my teacher would tell me and i told her to shut up because my mommy was smarter than her so she called my mom to pick me up for yelling at her and stuff and i said mommy my teacher doesn't know how to spell Mississippi and she finally told me "crooked letter" meant s and "humpback" was p yep i was looking pretty stupid

Anon

For some reason I thought the "elapsed time" said "applaused time" because people applauded about how fast it was!

Nate

When I was just learning the alphabet, I thought there was an actual way to spell every letter in the alphabet. For example I though "X" was actually spelled ex.

Linds

I always used to spell cheese 'Cheeze' a-la Cheeze Whiz. I didn't find out I was spelling it incorrectly until I was about 20 and working at a grocery store.

Hemlock

When I was about 4, my friend and I thought that writing in cursive was just writing a letter and then putting a big squiggle behind it, and then putting the next letter with a big squiggle, etc..
i.e.
"car" in our cursive would be
C~~~ a~~~~ r~~~~~
We didn't figure out what cursive actually was until 3 years later...ooops

Kels

one day when i was little i drew out the alphabet and i made a story about who loved who. For example a and b loved each other and c and loved each other. Mr C and Mrs D to be exact. Mrs I. and Mrs. K were both in love with Mr. J though. Uh Oh..

Isabella

At my elementary school we routinely sang "O Columbia, the gem of the ocean." I heard this as "Columbia, the jam of the ocean." I understood this to mean that America had got in Columbus' way when he tried to get to India. Sort of like a traffic jam.

BB

Up until I was 10 or 11, I thought the word anonymous was 'annoymous'.

Anon

When I was in middle school I had to write a paper for English. I remember my mom proof read it and looked at me confused and asked me to clarify by the phrase "I ran next store to borrow bread". I guess each time people would say "next door" I heard "next store". I remember arguing with her about it because I knew I was RIGHT!
It was a harsh reality that day!

Anon

I always had trouble with spelling and reading. I learned all of the rules but that never seemed to help. I was so proud of myself when I learned that "shun" was spelled "tion". So in my mind "otion" definitely spelled ocean.

tonybaloney