What the Superb Owl Can Remind You About Exam Writing

I woke up this morning to a humorous article about why owl photos flood the internet around this time each year.

It’s all because of people inadvertently typing “superb owl” instead of “Super Bowl” (i.e., moving the “b” that starts “bowl” to the end of “super”).

Over the years, people have turned the common misspelling into an internet phenomenon, making the search trend on Google each Super Bowl Weekend. This year’s Super Bowl between the Kansas City Chiefs and the Philadelphia Eagles takes place tomorrow.

This is a good opportunity to remind everyone taking the bar exam to watch their spelling in their essay and performance test responses—whether those misspellings are the result of just bad spelling or an overzealous autocorrect feature.

While boards of law examiners might state that their graders do not consider misspellings as they are reviewing examinees’ responses, it’s just natural for them to do so.

Take the warning from the Tennessee Board of Law Examiners: “While the essay examination is not an examination in grammar, spelling, or writing style, the cogency and coherence of your reasoning and discussion are being tested."

So, here’s a warning: Don’t misspell names that are given to you in the test question. Don’t misspell case names of opinions given to you in the performance tests. Pay particular attention to misuses of plurals and possessives and commonly misused words like “its” and “it’s.” While examiners will likely not deduct points for these mistakes, careless errors might cause the examiners to spend extra time reading your response to find more substantive problems throughout your response. And you never want examiners to spend more time reviewing your responses than they need to.

What are some commonly misspelled words that you might encounter on the essays? Here are some misspelled words I’ve noticed over my years of teaching (with the common misspellings in parentheses):

Agency

• Principal (not “principle”)

• Respondeat superior (not “respondent superior”)

Civil Procedure

• Collateral estoppel (not “collateral estopell”)

• Joinder (not “joiner”)

• Judgment (not "judgement")

• Res judicata (not “race judicata”)

• Supplemental (not “supplementel”)

Conflict of Law

• Erie doctrine (not “Eerie doctrine”)

Constitutional Law

• Imminent lawless action (not “imminant lawless action”)

• Statute (not “statue”)

Contracts and Sales

• Guarantee (not “garantee” or “guaranty”)

• Parol Evidence Rule (not “Parole Evidence Rule”)

• Statute of Frauds (not “Statutes of Fraud” or Statue of Frauds”)

Corporations and LLCs

• De jure corporation (not “de jury corporation”)

• Dissociation (not “disassociation”)

Criminal Law

• Actus reus (not “actus rea”)

• Embezzlement (not “embezzelment”)

• Mens rea (not “mens reus”)

Criminal Procedure

• Plain view exception (not “plane view exception”)

• Waiver (not “waver”)

Evidence

• Admissible (not “addmissible”)

• Marital communications (not “martial communications”)

• Relevant (not “relevent”)

Family Law

• Marital property (not “martial property”)

Partnership

• Dissociation (not “disassociation”)

• Remuneration (not “renumeration”)

Real Property

• Adverse possession (not “adverse posession” or “adverse possesion”)

• Conveyance (not “convayance”)

• Covenant (not “covenent”)

• Covenant of seisin (not “covenant of season”)

• Foreclosure (not “forclosure”)

• Quiet enjoyment (not “quite enjoyment”)

Secured Transactions

• Accession (not “acession” or “accesion”)

• Judgment lien creditor (not “judgment lein creditor”)

• Repossession (not “reposession” or “repossesion”)

Torts

• Res ipsa loquitur (not “res ipsa loquitor”)

Trusts

• Cy pres (not “Cyprus”)

• Settlor (not “settler”)

Wills

• Anti-lapse statute (not “anti-laps statute”)

• Codicils (not “codiciles”)

• Holographic wills (not “halographic wills”)

• Intestate succession (not “interstate succession” or “intestate succesion”)

• Per stirpes (not “per stripes”)

• Pretermitted children (not “pertermitted children”)