Spelled or spelt?

[headfairy]

Dh says spelt.. but isn't that a kind of flour?

and in this sentence is it "the word was spelled/spelt wrong" or "the word was spelled/spelt wrongly."?

[MerryMarigold]

Tagging. Wanna know. Or even spellt. Spelt is a kind of grain I think!

[VivaLeBeaver]

I would say that the word was spelled incorrectly.

Not sure if that's right or not.

[Deberny]

Both are fine.
dreamed/dreamt is the same

[Christmascheerinateacup]

Nowadays both are acceptable.

[Deberny]

You can't dumb down history
It's to do with which verb group they fell into in Old English.

[TapTapTapPenny]

both are fine

wrongly is correct
unless you want to rejig the punctuation and it's a sentence about the word 'wrong'

[MerryMarigold]

So is spellt one 'l' or two?

[TapTapTapPenny]

one L in spelt
two in spelled

[MerryMarigold]

Ok. Thanks. Odd! And do you pronounce 'spelled' as 'spelt' or just the way it's written.

[MerryMarigold]

Oops, that was a question. ?

[ConnorCamden]

spelled is past tense "She spelled it this way"
Spelt is present tense "the word is spelt wrong"

[BobbinRobin]

In 'The word is spelt wrong'

is 'spelt' is a verb? So should it be 'spelt wrongly'?

[RecursiveMoon]

I remember like this:

I spilled the milk. The milk is spilt.

That's right, isn't it ?

[BobbinRobin]

or 'spelt incorrectly' even??

[EdithWeston]

This thread had made me unsure what I'd say in some cases. RecursiveMoon's example is fine for some indications of an earlier event.

But is there a preferred version if those examples are amended to:

I have spilt the milk. / I have spilled the milk.
The milk has been spilt. / The milk has been spilled.

[nickelhadababyYesLord]

"the word is spelt incorrectly" because "spelt is present tense".
that's not right, sorry.

In that sentence, "is spelt" is the verb - and it's passive.

Spelled is the preferred spelling whichever mood or tense you are using.
It is common to say spelt, though.
There's no reason why you can't use "spelt" instead of "spelled" but it doesn't look so nice, so maybe for informal writing only.

Spelt is indeed a method of manufacturing grains.

[Katie2019]

Yes, "is spelt" is the present passive, but, in more detail, "is" is the auxiliary and "spelt" is the past participle.

[Katie2019]

Also, "spelled" is the preferred method in America, but in Britain we can use either. And I believe borth are pronounced "spelt". At least I've never heard the "d" pronounced in "spelled". Whether something "looks nice!" is subjective.
Also, spelt is not a method of manufacturing grains (as far as I know, grains are not manufactured, they are grown), but a species of wheat.

[Katie2019]

... sorry, both are pronounced... not borth.

[kingfisherblue33]

Actually, spelt/spelled can both be present and past tense! And both are correct in uK English. Same with
leaned/leant
Leaped/leapt
Learned/learnt
Burned/burnt

[Katie2019]

Well, I did say both were used in UK. But I'm curious about them being in the present tense!

[kingfisherblue33]

Check dictionary refs, Katie!

[DavidWeb]

This verb has both an irregular and regular form. You can use both and both are correct. Speakers in North America and Canada use spelled while the rest of the English-speaking world seems to prefer spelt but accept spelled as well.


But which is the most used one, spelt or spelled? Let´s look at Google Ngram Viewer tool which displays a graph showing how phrases have occurred in a corpus of books over the years. Spelled is more used than Spilt from 1890.

Source: en.learniv.com/info/en/irregular-verbs/spelled-or-spelt-what-is-correct-and-how-to-use-it/

[Michlar1086]

All of this is wrong

[VanillaAndOrange]

I write "spelt" because I pronounce it "spelt" and I've certainly seen it written that way for as long as I've been able to read (about 50 years). There was a time when "spelled" only seemed to appear in American books, so I thought it was a simple distinction between British and American English. More recently I've seen people arguing for "spelled" on this and other forums, but I still think "spelt" is more common.

I think "spelt wrongly" is strictly correct but looks wrong. "Spelt wrong" is strictly ungrammatical but is what absolutely everybody says, including teachers, so I'd go with that.