Speeling mestakes: Even future queens sometimes make spelling mistakes

Shock horror! Catherine Duchess of Cambridge, the future Queen of England, can’t spell! Well, she’s made one spelling mistake at least! Even future queens sometimes make spelling mistakes In 2008, she was a guest at Wimbledon and very sweetly sent the organisers a handwritten thank you note afterwards. She went to a very expensive public school, Marlborough College, where the annual fees are £29,000, then St Andrews University and yet she still doesn’t know the difference between ‘quiet’ and ‘quite’. In her note, she wrote,

‘Dear Sir. Thank you for your kind hospitality at Wimbledon last week. My friend and I had such a fantastic time and it was great to be able to enjoy the day knowing that we could have a little peace and quite if things got a little too hectic.’

Of course, she meant to write ‘peace and quiet’, but when you actually use pen and paper and don’t have spellcheck to sort out your document, then it’s very easy to make spelling mistakes like these. If she had studied at SGI though, she probably wouldn’t have made this mistake. (BTW, this is a good 3^rd conditional sentence. Can you see how easy they are to just throw into normal conversation?) In the two-page letter, she goes on to say, ‘It was a wonderfully relaxed day and we even spent part of it on the “Henman Hill”, which was great fun.’ It’s a good job that she will be in Canada with William very soon and not attending Wimbledon (but I’m sure her sister, Pippa will) because Murray Mound, as it is now known (the small grassy hill in front of a huge video wall, where up to 5,000 spectators can watch the important matches), has been closed due to Health & Safety fears. Apparently, the management is worried that somebody might slip and fall over. Hmmm…. yes, that’s right: why don’t you spoil the fun for thousands of people just because some little, old granny down from Oxford for the day has had a glass of champagne and falls on her arse?!?! Anyway, here are a few spelling errors that I have seen while correcting English essays. You should try to avoid these if you are doing an exam like the IELTS, where you will get marked down for classic spelling mistakes.