一個語文水平高的人，必須對文字有充分駕馭的能力；打開一篇文章，如果滿紙錯別字，不但顯示了作者語文水平的低落，還往往會影響溝通。所以錯別字是我們談論語文教學、語文水平考核等問題，不可忽略的因素。作者於1994-95年間進行了一項香港學生寫錯別字的研究，希望通過定量分析，瞭解香港學生錯別字的類型、頻率和分佈情況，以探討他們寫錯別字的成因，日後可以在這基礎上研究改善的方法。

The mastery of Chinese characters is a prerequisite of good language standard. An article full of wrongly-written characters not only reveals the weakness of the writer’s language proficiency, but also hinders communication. Writing is therefore an important issue which cannot be overlooked in Chinese language teaching and language proficiency tests. The author conducted a quantitative survey of wrongly- written Chinese characters found in the compositions of Hong Kong students during 1994-95, hoping that the data obtained (in terms of type, frequency and distribution) can provide us with useful information for understanding the cause of the mistakes, and for ways of improvement.