This paper explores the spelling patterns of Spanish-English bilingual adolescents, covering the cross-linguistic impact of each language. When addressed as both cognitive and linguistic activity, spelling is intricate as multifarious knowledge systems must be ordered. Triple word form theory, employed to examine misspellings in novice bilingual writers argues that distinguishing misspelling patterns in each language offers more understanding than mere transfer of the merging level of orthography, morphology and phonology.