Spelling Rules

Although English is a mish mash of many different base languages there are a few spelling rules that can assist in the correct spelling of words.  It must be remembered however that not all words will follow the rules and these exceptions are referred to as irregular words.  You can improve your spelling by improving your study method.  Try the following method to learn to spell new words.  You can also improve your spelling by thoroughly learning certain common but frequently misspelled words.

Learning To Spell:

1. Look at the printed word and say it aloud.  Then say it again, pronouncing each syllable correctly.
2. Picture the word in your mind, try to visualize the shape of the word.  Avoid looking at the printed word on the page.  Try to visualize the word letter by letter.
3. Look at the printed word again, and write it two or three times.  Then write the word without looking at the printed spelling.
4. Check your spelling.  Did you spell the word correctly?  If not, repeat each step until you can spell the word easily. 

Dictionary:

 Think of how the word might be spelled and look this combination of letters in a dictionary.

Computer:

A word processing program will have a spell checker which will recognize the attempt to spell the word.  Although spell checkers are handy, they can’t do the whole job.  A computer can only search its own memory for similarly spelled words and offer these qas a choice, the choice is up to you, so you still need to know how to spell the word you need.  The human brain is much more complex and efficient.  The following are some general rules of spelling in English.

Spelling ie and ei:

An easy way to learn when to use ie and when to use ei is to memorize  the following rhyming rule.  Then learn the common exceptions to the rule. 

Write I before E, Except after C, or when sounded like an A, as in Neighbor and Weigh

Some exceptions are either, caffeine, foreign, forfeit, height, heir, leisure, neither, protein, seize, species, their, weird; words ending in cient (ancient) and cience (conscience; plurals of nouns ending in cy (democracies); the third person singular form of verbs ending in cy (fancies); words in which I and e follow c but represent separate sounds (science, society).