mistyped

Mistyped is the past participle of mistype and is used to describe text that was produced by typing incorrectly. In common usage, something described as mistyped has a wrong character, placed in the wrong position, or a missing or extra character as a result of keyboard input rather than a deliberate spelling choice. The term can function as an adjective, as in “mistyped word,” or as a verb in contexts like “the user mistyped the URL.”

Mistyping is a frequent form of typographical error and is closely related to slips of the finger and keyboard proximity. Causes include rushing, fatigue, unfamiliar or nonstandard keyboard layouts, layout misperception, and interference from autocorrect or predictive text systems. While many mistypes are small (a single incorrect letter), longer strings can produce substantial changes in meaning or render text unreadable.

In practice, mistyped text can alter interpretation, lead to miscommunication, or disrupt workflows when it occurs in critical contexts such as URLs, email addresses, or code. Although often trivial to fix, mistypes can carry social or practical consequences, particularly in professional or formal writing.

Detection and correction rely on automated tools and human proofreading. Spell checkers and grammar tools flag likely mistypes, while autocorrect systems attempt to replace them with intended forms. Editors may use fuzzy matching and edit distance measures to suggest near misses, and search engines approximate mistyped queries to retrieve relevant results. Understanding mistypes helps improve typing interfaces, error recovery, and user communication.