You have an important email to send at work. You write it, read it again, hesitate over "their" and "there", run the spell-checker and, even so, after sending it you spot a mistake that makes you cringe. Since school you have been told it was carelessness or that you needed to read more. But you have tried, and it keeps happening.

Poor spelling in adults is not always carelessness. Sometimes it is one of the clearest signs of dyslexia that was never diagnosed. This guide explains why adults make spelling mistakes, how dyslexia shows in different languages, which signs are worth looking at, which test can help you check and what to do next.

Why you make spelling mistakes as an adult

An occasional mistake means nothing: it happens to anyone writing in a hurry, half asleep or thinking about something else. What deserves attention is the pattern. If the mistakes are frequent, they appear in words you know well, you spell the same word two different ways in the same text, or you need the spell-checker for everything and mistakes still slip through, it is worth asking whether something more is going on.

The NHS puts exactly this first among the signs of dyslexia in adults: often spelling words wrong. It adds others that tend to go with it: confusing words that look similar, needing to read something several times before it makes sense, feeling tired after a lot of reading and writing, finding it hard to tell left from right, forgetting dates or names, getting confused by more than one instruction at a time, or being skilled in some areas while struggling with tasks most people find easy.

Carelessness, lack of practice or something more

Rushing, tiredness or writing while doing something else explain plenty of one-off mistakes. What they do not explain is a long-standing problem that does not improve with effort and that costs you more than it costs the people around you. Diagnostic manuals take this into account: the DSM-5 includes spelling accuracy among the difficulties of specific learning disorder with impairment in written expression, and notes that it may not become obvious until demands exceed a person's capacities, for example at university or in a job with a lot of writing.

How dyslexia shows in different languages

How dyslexia shows depends on the language. A meta-analysis by Reis and colleagues, covering 178 studies of adults with dyslexia, found that reading and writing difficulties persist into adulthood, are most visible in speed and are less marked in languages with transparent spelling, such as Spanish, than in less transparent ones, such as English. In other words, in English dyslexia tends to show more clearly, including in spelling; in Spanish it can hide behind accurate but slow reading, as we explain in Types of dyslexia: what they are and how they show in adults.

Less marked does not mean absent. In a study by Afonso and colleagues of Spanish-speaking adults with dyslexia, participants took longer to start writing, paused more between letters, wrote more slowly and made more mistakes than peers without dyslexia, especially with infrequent and long words. Yet they applied the rules for turning sounds into letters just as well. The authors link this to difficulty retrieving the form of each word and keeping track of the order of its letters. That matters in any language where the same sound can be spelled in more than one way and spelling well means remembering what each word looks like.

Why so many adults never find out

When reading aloud sounds fine, dyslexia is easily missed. In a study of 686 university students in Madrid, López-Escribano and colleagues estimated that between 1.6% and 6.4% could be at risk of dyslexia, and pointed out that diagnosis among university-level adults in Spain is rare. If you have also always read slowly, Why do I read so slowly? Causes of slow reading in adults and when it is dyslexia explains when that can be dyslexia.

Man at the office covering his face in front of his laptop, like the frustration of writing with undiagnosed dyslexia

Signs that your spelling mistakes could be dyslexia

These signs do not diagnose anything, but if you recognise several of them it is worth taking the test and considering an assessment:

  • You make spelling mistakes often, even in words you use every day.
  • You spell the same word in different ways or often doubt how it is spelled.
  • Writing takes you more time and effort than it takes others, and you avoid long texts.
  • You read slowly or need to reread to understand.
  • Learning to read and write at school was hard for you, even though you tried.
  • You feel clumsy with written work, even though you do well at other things.

Is there a dyslexia test for adults?

Yes. The MyPsicoTest Dyslexia Test has a whole area on writing and spelling, and several of its 20 statements describe exactly what happens to you:

  • "I make spelling mistakes frequently, even in words I know well".
  • "I spell the same word in different ways or often doubt how it is spelled".
  • "I rely on the spell-checker and mistakes still slip through".

Another looks back, because dyslexia does not suddenly appear in adulthood: "At school I found learning to read or write much harder than my classmates did, even though I tried hard".

It takes about six minutes, thinking about how this usually happens to you, today and throughout your life, and each statement runs from "Not at all" to "Completely". The score runs from 0 to 80, with four guidance levels (few indicators, some traits consistent with dyslexia, moderate indicators and high indicators), and it is broken down into three areas: reading, writing and spelling and memory, sequencing and organisation. That way you can see whether your difficulty is concentrated in spelling or also shows up in reading and in remembering sequences. The result is calculated on your device and your answers are not stored.

Other tests that may help

If what lets you down most is attention, and you make careless mistakes in many tasks beyond writing, take the ADHD Test too: one of its statements is "I find it hard to pay attention to details or I make careless mistakes at work, in my studies or in everyday tasks". We explain more in Lack of concentration: why you can't focus and how to find the cause. And if years of corrections have left you feeling you are no good at writing, the Self-Esteem Test helps you see how much it weighs on you. All the questionnaires, free and anonymous, are in the psychological tests catalogue.

What to do if you make a lot of spelling mistakes

Ask for an assessment

The test is a guide, not a diagnosis. The NHS explains that a dyslexia assessment is not done by a medical doctor but by an educational psychologist or a specialist in dyslexia, who looks at reading, writing and using numbers. A diagnosis, even a late one, helps you make sense of what has happened and ask for adjustments at college, university or work.

Use tools without guilt

The NHS recommends telling your employer so they can support you, for example with screenreaders or by offering information on video. Voice dictation, spell-checkers, text-to-speech and templates for the emails you write most are not cheating: they are how you stop writing from holding you back.

Train your spelling, with realistic expectations

For children and adolescents, a German guideline based on a meta-analysis by Galuschka and colleagues concluded that spelling responds best to spelling-rule training and that systematic teaching of letter-sound correspondences improves reading and spelling. The same authors warn that for adults, well-studied assessment tools and treatments are still lacking, so be wary of anyone promising quick fixes.

At the end of the test you will find our recommendation of a licensed psychologist who works with ADHD and anxiety, online too.

If your result worries you or you want a professional assessment, you can talk to Xènia Capel Salcedo, a licensed psychologist (COPC reg. 14982), who offers a free first consultation call and online therapy from anywhere.

MyPsicoTest team · Updated: