Correct spelling marks the well-educated man or woman. This simple fact constitutes the reason why one must learn to spell.
English spelling offers difficulty partly because it is somewhat archaic—that is, because pronunciation has changed since spelling became fixed by printers about three hundred years ago; partly because the English alphabet is inadequate—it has only twenty-six characters, and there are forty-two sounds in spoken English.
But however irrational may be the spelling of many English words, every student must master spelling. Nor is this a difficult task if attacked with persistence and determination. The chief obstacles are carelessness and lack of courage. Of the 450,000 words in the largest dictionaries, probably not more than one thousand are commonly misspelled by any one person—even the worst speller alive. Completely mastering a few words each day for one year, therefore, will enable any one to become a good speller.
But no short cut method has ever been discovered which will give skill to the writer who finds spelling difficult. Every separate word which he habitually misspells must be thoroughly and permanently learned by a distinct effort of the memory, aided by regular practice. Practice, in fact, is the only means of acquiring fluent and permanent control over one’s pet failings. But the memorizing and the practice may well be facilitated by an intelligent attack on the problem.
Human beings remember things in different ways, or in a combination of different ways. Some remember most easily and clearly what they have carefully looked at; these are of the visualizing type. Some remember what they have heard spoken aloud; these are of the auditory type. And others remember best certain motions which their muscles have performed; these are of the motor type. It follows that some persons learn to spell most easily by looking carefully at a difficult word letter by letter or syllable by syllable; others by hearing it spelled aloud or by spelling it aloud; and still others by writing it over and over. But of whatever type a person may be, he learns best by combining all three methods, and by assiduously practicing the last, for the only time he needs to spell is when he is writing.
The problem of spelling can be mastered by writing every word five or ten times while the writer has his eyes fixed upon the correct form and is spelling the word aloud. Practice on the same word for three successive days is almost certain to fix it for all time in the memory.
The weak speller cannot dispense with a dictionary. Asking a fellow student how to spell a word marked incorrect by an instructor is fatal, for the fellow student is often as ignorant as the questioner. Look up the misspelled word in Webster’s, the Standard, or the Century Dictionary.
Many misspellings fall into classes which can be covered by simple rules. Following are the most helpful of these rules.
700. Words with a last syllable consisting of a single short accented vowel followed by a single consonant, double the consonant when adding a suffix beginning with a vowel.
Observe that the conditions are three:
701. Words with a last syllable ending in a short vowel and a single consonant, but not accented on the last syllable, do not double the final consonant.
702. Words ending in final silent -e drop the -e before a suffix beginning with a vowel. They do NOT double the consonant.
703. Words ending in -ce or -ge keep the -e before a suffix beginning with -a or -o, to show that -c- or -g- is soft.
704. Words with an accented double vowel, or with an accented diphthong, do NOT double a final single consonant.
705. CEI. EI regularly follows c-.
Observe also: either, neither, leisure, seize, weird, their, counterfeit, foreign.
706. EI occasionally spells the sound of long i and of long a.
707. IE regularly follows all consonants except c-.
Observe also: financier, friend, sieve.
708. Nouns ending in a vowel and -y form the plural by adding -s.
709. Verbs ending in a vowel and -y form the third person singular, present indicative, by adding -s.
710. Nouns ending in a consonant and -y form the plural by changing the -y to -i and adding -es.
711. Many nouns ending in -f or -fe form the plural in -ves.
712. Some foreign nouns form the plural according to the inflectional laws of their own language.
713. Don’t, won’t, can’t, aren’t, hasn’t, haven’t, have the apostrophe between n and t, where a vowel has been omitted.
714. It’s is the colloquial form of it is. The apostrophe marks the omission of i.
715. Its, yours, hers, ours, theirs, his, whose (possessive pronouns), do NOT have an apostrophe.
716. Following is a list of words most frequently misspelled by college freshmen.