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Google’s Simon Rogers presents us with a map of the words each state’s residents query most often:
Hmmm. Beautiful is the winner, coming up #1 in five different states. Pneumonia is next. It’s #1 in three cold, northern states—which makes sense—but also in Alabama for some reason. There are also several unique oddities:
- In Idaho, they want to know how to spell quote. Do they quote people a lot in Idaho? And why do they have trouble spelling it?
- In Wisconsin, they want to know how to spell Wisconsin. This is a serious failure of their primary school system.
- In Washington DC, they want to know how to spell nintey, a word that doesn’t exist. That seems appropriate. Perhaps this is a misspelling of ninety by the mapmaker? If so, why does ninety occupy so much attention in DC?
- Lots of people in Vermont are apparently thinking of fleeing to Europe, but only after they figure out how to spell it. Ditto for South Dakotans who want to go to college.
The headline of this post is a Twitter test. How many people do you think will correct me because they don’t actually click the link?
UPDATE: Yes, Washington DC is fixated on ninety. But why?
