Both, without penalty either way. Every word in this test spells the same way in American and British English: we deliberately left out words such as colour and color, or organise and organize, where the two differ, so no one is marked wrong for using their own variety of English. We checked every correct word and every misspelling against both an American and a British dictionary before publishing.

Each of the forty words has exactly one correct spelling, identified by its exact letters rather than by where it sits in the list, and a correct pick earns credit toward your total. There is no penalty for guessing and no partial credit inside a single word. Your result shows how many of the forty you got right, a percentage and one of five descriptive bands. It does not compare you with other people, because we have no verified population norm for this test.

No. This test measures whether you can recognise one correctly spelled word among three misspellings, a narrower and easier task than producing correct spelling from memory while you write. A low score can reflect many ordinary things, from unfamiliarity with particular words to simply moving quickly through the questions. If spelling is getting in the way of your work or study, a qualified professional assessment is the right next step, not an online quiz.

Realistic. Each wrong option reflects a specific, commonly made error for that exact word: a letter doubled that should not be, a vowel that sounds the same as the correct one, a spelling rule applied the wrong way round, or a piece of the word left out. None of the wrong options are random letter swaps. They are the mistakes people actually type, which is what makes picking the right one a fair check.