Abstract
We examine unintentional spelling errors (“dt-fouten”) on regular verb homophones in informal social media writing of Flemish adolescents. Our study reveals a high overall error rate: 28 percent of all target forms were spelled incorrectly. In addition, we found some clear patterns with regard to gender and the psycholinguistic variables that played a role in previous experimental research. Boys made significantly more verb spelling errors than girls. This effect of gender suggests that girls display greater error awareness or norm sensitivity. However, in both gender groups we found the same error pattern: a psycholinguistic effect of homophone dominance which causes more errors on the lower frequency form. These findings reveal that a greater focus on spelling errors may reduce the number of dt-errors, while it has no effect on the nature of those errors.
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