A writer types zai jie zai li on a pinyin keyboard, and the input method offers a row of characters that all sound the same. The idiom 再接再厉 ("keep up the effort") wants 厉. The row also holds 励, which means "encourage" and looks like the more sensible choice. The writer taps it, and 再接再励 goes to print. Nothing about the shape of the character went wrong; the keyboard supplied the shape. What went wrong was the choice between homophones.
That is the commonest Chinese typo. In a 2010 study of 621 miswritten words collected from Chinese school and exam material, 83% of the errors were related to sound and 48% to shape, with many related to both. A 2024 corpus of 40,000 Weibo posts by native speakers found that over 97% of errors involved the same or a similar sound, and that 49.4% of them were real words used in the wrong place. Some studies of handwriting, especially by learners, find look-alike characters more troublesome; typed text is a different problem, because nobody draws the character.
Catching them depends on the error. A simple list catches some. Others need the whole sentence for context. Some turn on a published standard, and one common case comes down to an editor's house style.
再接再励
The best-known list of common miswritings is the Shanghai usage magazine 《咬文嚼字》's 《当代汉语出版物中最常见的100个别字》, the hundred commonest wrong characters in contemporary Chinese publications, announced on 22 April 2005. Its top ten, wrong form first, is 松驰, 穿流不息, 渡假村, 一幅对联, 既使, 挖墙角, 再接再励, 谈笑风声, 渲泄 and 九洲. Since 2006 the magazine has also published a list of the year's ten most notable language errors, and the same slips keep returning: 修茸 (for 修葺, to repair a building) is on the 2005 list and on the list for 2025. 挖墙角 (for 挖墙脚, to poach) appears in 2005 and again in 2019, and 2005's top item, 松驰, came back in 2024 as 松驰感.
For errors like these, a list works. The correct form is fixed, the wrong one is not a word, and a checker only has to spot the string. Our Chinese typo checker works this way, with 104 rules; 81 of them swap a character for one with exactly the same syllable and tone. We tested it against the 2005 hundred and it caught 35. Four of those were added to its list on 27 September 2026 because this list named them, so a fairer test is text it was not built from. Of 35 context-free character errors on the magazine's annual lists for 2019 to 2025, it caught 3. Of 19 common errors we wrote that are not on its list, such as 按步就班 and 烦燥, it caught one.
起用 or 启用
Many of the errors on recent annual lists are a different kind: both forms are real words. 起用 (to appoint someone) and 启用 (to bring something into use); 过渡 (transition) and 过度 (excessive); 侦察 (military reconnaissance) and 侦查 (criminal investigation); 终止 and 中止; 途经 and 途径; 情结 and 情节. Each wrong form is correct somewhere else. No list can flag them, because flagging 启用 everywhere would flag every correct 启用 too. Only the sentence decides.
The same problem runs the other way. Chinese is written without spaces, so a two-character rule can match two characters that belong to different words. 本次采购统一付款 contains 一付, which is a real error for 一副 in 一付对联, but here it is 统一 followed by 付款. 这幅射手座插画 contains 幅射, and 要打破害怕失败的心理 contains 破害. We wrote 24 correct sentences like these, and the first version of our checker flagged every one. Since 27 September 2026 each rule carries exceptions for the words it commonly straddles, and it flags none of them, while still catching the ten genuine errors we tested alongside.
Running the same rules over the Chinese text of our own site found four genuine typos, in the explanations attached to temple oracle lots: 迁徒 for 迁徙 three times, and 寒喧 for 寒暄. They are fixed. It also flagged 刑冲破害, four relations between the earthly branches, six times on our Tai Sui checker's page, because the phrase contains 破害. That was correct text, and the checker no longer flags it.
Dedicated research systems, which read the context, are far from perfect either. In the shared tests run by the SIGHAN workshops between 2013 and 2015, the best systems' detection scores ranged from 0.63 to 0.76, on a scale where 1 means every error found and nothing wrongly flagged.
像 and 象
Some "errors" are variants, and some were the official form within living memory. The mainland's list of variant word forms, 《第一批异形词整理表》 (GF 1001-2001), groups 338 pairs of spellings of the same word and marks one of each as recommended: 影像 over 影象, 成分 over 成份. The other form is a non-recommended variant, not an unrelated wrong character.
Until 1986, 象 was the simplified form of 像 and 迭 the simplified form of 叠, so 好象, 影象 and 重迭 were the standard spellings. The 1986 re-issue of the simplified character table restored 像 and 叠. Twenty years later, 《咬文嚼字》's first annual list, for 2006, named 象 as the commonest error in subtitles. Our guide to how China, Taiwan and Unicode choose a character covers how these standards are set.
The standard also depends on where you write. 渡过难关, to get through a difficulty, is the form 《咬文嚼字》 and the People's Daily usage columnist 杜永道 recommend: time takes 度, as in 度过困难时期, but an obstacle takes 渡, like crossing water. Our checker had that rule the wrong way round until September 2026. In Taiwan's Ministry of Education dictionary, 座落 and 逕行 are headwords in their own right, and 度過 and 渡過 are each listed as also written the other way. A checker built on mainland norms flags correct Taiwanese text, which is one reason converting between the two scripts is not a simple swap.
的, 地, 得
The most argued-over case is 的, 地 and 得. School grammar from 1956 separated them: 的 before a noun, 地 before a verb, 得 after one. In 2008 the Ministry of Education answered a question on this by saying that the school grammar outline of the 1980s had stopped requiring 的 and 地 to be kept apart in teaching, adding that keeping them apart is still better. It said nothing of the kind about 得. The People's Daily columnist 杜永道 wrote in 2015 that 多么的愉快, with 的 where 地 would be strict, should not be treated as an error. Taiwan's dictionary goes further and gives 慢慢的走 as an example of 的 used as 地.
So 慢慢的走 is not a 错别字 by the mainland teaching standard or by Taiwan's dictionary, and writing 跑的快 for 跑得快 has no such cover. An editor, a publisher or an exam marker may still expect all three kept apart; that is their house style to set. We found no ruling that made the three interchangeable, though the claim circulates.
One sentence shows what no checker can settle. 他们正在侦察 and 他们正在侦查 are both correct Chinese. The first says they are soldiers on reconnaissance; the second, that they are police on a case.
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