I never have been a great speller but noticed in my 50’s I seemed to struggle more with thing like 2 l’s or 2 m’s etc in words, now I am in my 60’s and it seems to be getting worse. I am not sure if spell check has ruined me or lack of practice or just getting older, maybe all 3? Any one know of any studies done on this?
I don’t know anything about it other than that my own experience (now in my 50s) is exactly the same. And I’m an editor, for chrissakes!
I have been a little disturbed by it. I’ll look around online. Maybe someone else already has info.
I am finding the same with increasing frequency (63).
Thank Og for spellcheckers.
I’ve gotten worse at spelling also, (but I don’t read as much as I use to).
I’d better hope no one comes in here from two recent threads, where I advocate for spelling know as gno, and sleepy as zleepy…
As I approach 50 my spelling is getting worse. You know its bad when its so far off that spell check can’t suggest the right word. 
I personally don’t blame spell check. I suspect my old writings contained spelling errors that I just never caught. Spell check has made life easier because I don’t have to drive myself nuts asking people how to spell something. Or grabbing a dictionary. I used to hate wasting time in a dictionary. It’s a myth that you learn to spell by looking it up. I never remembered the spelling of words that I looked up.
My money’s on “getting older”. I’ll bet the spelling’s close to “vocabulary recall”.
As I tell my students, when I’m standing at the blackboard trying to remember a ridiculously common word…
"First the knees go, then the nouns."
Indeed, I was just looking for a book on Amazon for my grandson and couldn’t continue as I could not recall the word to put in the search box for five minutes.
“Anatomy”
Happens far to frequently for comfort.
I have the same problem with vocabulary, I don’t have much education but did take some pride in my vocabulary, I noticed in my middle forties I would sometimes struggle for a word now I am on the phone to my girlfriend about every 15 min trying to describe the word I am looking for. I am fine with my reading vocabulary I just can’t recall the words when I need them.
I have grown too reliant on spell check, so my spelling has grown worse.
What do you do a lot? Is spelling in the list of things that on a daily basis you need to know? For me it is, as I write lots of documents (I just turned 60) and I have to spell large words on a daily basis. Spell check is fine but it just slows the process. Use it or lose it.
I am a recently retired truck shop foreman. Now that I think of it the last 15 years we have used computers for all of out correspondence, invoices etc, mostly select an option and hit enter. Maybe I just got out practice.
Dude, I’m not even FORTY and this is happening. Same with recall of movies/movie stars. Trying to recall the supporting star of an older movie with friends is painful.
“What’s the name of the movie where the guy is a cop in LA in, like the fifties. He was in that other movie where he can’t remember stuff with that chick in the Keanu Reeves movie where he lived in a computer or whatever.”
“The Matrix!”
“Yeah. The Matrix. What was that chick’s name again? Something religious?”
“Trinity!”
“Right. Wait. What was I trying to remember?”
I spend much of my day writing, although it’s largely emails these days. In an academic context, even the emails have to be well-written. Still, I struggle sometimes to remember spellings. On the other hand, my email program auto-corrects most of my problem words – I just have to watch that it substitutes the right word – so it doesn’t slow me down. My current bugaboo is accommodate; that just doesn’t look right…
Don’t get me started on not remembering words.