Spelling, oriented

Wrong options usually differ from the right one at a single place, so line the four up and find that place before you judge anything. If the choices are compitition, compatition, compotition and competition, the whole dispute is the vowel after "comp". Then name the rule for that spot. No rule fixes a blurred vowel, so reach for a relative that says it clearly: compete puts the beat on that e, and competition keeps it.

Three more tools help where no rule reaches. Long words are built from parts that keep their own letters, so spell each part and join them: un plus natural plus ly gives unnaturally, with two l's where natural meets ly. Fast speech swallows syllables, so say the word slowly, the way it is written, before you write it: choc-o-late. For a spelling that no rule explains, attach a short hook to the exact letters in doubt. Dessert has two s's, like a second helping; desert has one.

When a question asks which word is misspelled, the task turns around. Test every option with the rules, because a correct but unusual spelling can look wrong. If every option passes, an answer saying that none is misspelled may be the right one.

The trap is comparing whole words by feel. The familiar-looking option wins, and in a misspelled-word question the odd-looking one loses, whether or not either is actually wrong.

Rule: find the disputed spot, name the rule that governs it, and check only that spot; give a word with no rule a hook aimed at its hard letters.

Joining a suffix turns on the letter that ends the root: a silent e, a y, or an l. Doubling a final consonant belongs with the other doubled letters, in the next chapter.

A silent e goes before a suffix that starts with a vowel, because the e is no longer needed for the sound: dine gives dining, and use gives usage. It stays before a consonant, so hope gives hopeful. After a soft c or g, the e also stays before a suffix that starts with a or o, since dropping it would make the c or g hard: changeable, peaceable, courageous. Before i it can go, as in changing. A short list breaks the rule outright, including duly, wholly, awful and judgment, while dyeing keeps its e so it is not read as dying.

A final y after a consonant turns to i before a suffix (copy, copied; noisy, noisiest), except before a suffix that starts with i: copying. After a vowel the y stays, apart from paid, laid and said. A few short words such as dry and shy also keep their y, in dryly and shyness.

An adjective ending in l takes ly whole, so equal gives equally, with two l's. One ending in le works another way: the le becomes ly, so possible gives possibly, with one l. A few roots also change inside a derived word: explain gives explanation, and curious gives curiosity.

The trap is applying a rule without looking at both sides of the join. Given emploied, employd and employed, look at the letter just before the y. It is a vowel, so the y stays and ed is simply added: employed.

Rule: read the last letter of the root and the first letter of the suffix as a pair; that pair decides the join, and a short list of exceptions overrides it.

At a suffix, the root's final consonant doubles only when three things hold: the root ends in one consonant with one vowel before it, the suffix starts with a vowel, and the root is one syllable or is stressed on its last syllable. Trap gives trapped. Compel is stressed on its last syllable, so it gives compelled, while travel is stressed on its first, so American spelling writes traveled, as it does benefited. When a condition fails, nothing doubles: reap has two vowels (reaped), track ends in two consonants (tracking), and conceal, though stressed at the end, has two vowels before its l (concealed). An x never doubles, because it already stands for two sounds (boxing), and a w after a vowel counts as part of the vowel (crawling). A few words double despite early stress, such as kidnapped and programmed.

Say the new word, not only the root. Prefer doubles in preferred, but preference moves the stress to the first syllable, so the r stays single. Excellence is an exception to memorize: the stress leaves the end of excel, yet the l still doubles.

At most prefixes, nothing is added and nothing is lost. Dis plus satisfy gives dissatisfy, and re plus enact gives reenact, but dis plus appear gives disappear, with one s. Some prefixes change their last letter to match the root, which is why illegal, irregular, attract and collect each carry a double.

The trap is spreading a double to its neighbor, or keeping one double and losing another. Omission doubles its s but not its m, and tattoo doubles twice.

Rule: write two of a consonant only where a join or the word's own spelling puts two, and check each pair on its own.

This rule covers one sound only. When the pair sounds like "ee", ie is the usual spelling: yield, grief, shield. Right after a c that sounds like s, the order reverses: deceive, conceit. So the check is two questions in order: does the pair say "ee", and does a c come directly before it? Suppose a blank offers cieling and ceiling. The pair says "ee" and a c sits right before it, so you write ceiling.

If the vowel says anything else, the rule does not apply at all. Neighbor and weigh spell an "ay" sound with ei, and sieve spells a short vowel with ie. These are not exceptions; they sit outside the rule, and you need to know each one as a word.

A few words do break the rule, spelling with ei for an "ee" sound with no c before it. Either and neither are the familiar ones, and the list is short, so learn it as a set. When a word without a c seems to want ei, check it on that list rather than trusting the feeling.

One look-alike is no break at all. A plural such as vacancies has ie right after a c, but that ie comes from the y of vacancy turning to i before es, so the c rule never applied.

The trap is running the rule on every ie or ei you meet. Say the vowel first; if it is not "ee", the rule has nothing to tell you.

Rule: apply ie-except-after-c only to an "ee" sound, learn the short list of ei exceptions by name, and leave every other sound to memory.

For able and ible, the federal style manual lists the ible words and sends the rest of the class to able, so able is the safer guess for a rare word, while common ible words such as visible, audible and edible are worth knowing on sight. As a rough test, an able word often rests on a whole English word (accept, acceptable), and an ible word on a stem that is not a word alone, such as the vis of visible; flexible breaks the test. After a soft c or g, the word takes ible or keeps its e. Choosing between forceable and forcible, the soft c would need its e before able, and the federal list settles it as forcible, while trace and manage keep their e in traceable and manageable.

Between ant and ent the sound rarely decides, but a family stays consistent: important gives importance, and confident gives confidence. A soft c or g just before the ending hints at ence (intelligence) and a hard one at ance (elegance), though vengeance softens its g with an e and still takes ance.

Short lists settle three families. One word ends in sede and three in ceed, succeed among them; every other word ends in cede, as precede and concede do. The same manual writes ize by default (recognize), lyze for words that carry an idea of loosening or separating (analyze), and ise for a fixed list that includes advertise and supervise. Verbs that end in a "fy" sound mostly take ify (clarify), and a few take efy (rarefy, stupefy).

A base word ending in ge keeps its e before ous (courage, courageous), yet religious has a soft g and ious. The endings ar, er and or are learned with each word, sometimes from a relative: scholastic shows the a in scholar.

The trap is trusting how the ending sounds. Both spellings in each pair sound the same, so the ear cannot choose between them.

Rule: for each sound-alike ending, know its default and its short list, and use a related form when one shows the letter.

Silent consonants gather in known places within a syllable: a b after m (climb), a g before n (gnat), a w before r (wrist), an n after m at the end of a word (autumn), and a p before s at the start (psalm). The pattern holds only inside one syllable. In signal a syllable break falls between the g and the n, and the g is sounded. A relative often brings a silent letter back: soft sounds the t that soften hides, and designate sounds the g of design.

A vowel in an unstressed syllable is said quickly and weakly, so the ear gives a poor clue to which letter to write. Find a family member that stresses the doubtful vowel. Suppose you hesitate between relitive and relative: relate puts the beat on that vowel and says a, so you write relative. In the same way, invite sounds the i hidden in invitation.

Speech also changes a word's length. Said quickly, temperature or laboratory can lose a syllable, and the spelling keeps it anyway. Going the other way, if you say athletic or mischievous with an extra syllable, you will be tempted to write a vowel that is not there.

The gh group is a family of its own. After i it is silent (fight), it is silent in taught and daughter, and in some words it stands for an f sound (laugh, tough). Learn these words grouped by their letters, and treat each ough word on its own, since one spelling covers several sounds.

The trap is trusting the way you say a word in everyday speech, which blurs and drops the very letters in doubt.

Rule: when you cannot hear a letter, find a relative that sounds it, or count the syllables of the slow, careful version.

The plain plural adds s. A noun that ends in a hissing sound, written s, sh, x, z, or ch as in church, adds es, and you can hear the extra syllable: wishes, boxes. A ch that sounds like k is not a hissing sound, so if you are choosing between stomaches and stomachs, the k sound tells you to add only s: stomachs. A noun ending in a consonant plus y changes the y to i and adds es (berry, berries), while a vowel plus y just adds s (valley, valleys). It is the same y rule that governs suffixes.

Some borrowed nouns keep the plural of their source language. Nouns in is change to es (thesis, theses), a few in on change to a (phenomenon, phenomena), and some in us and um take i and a (nucleus, nuclei; stratum, strata). Such a form is already plural, so adding an s to it is wrong.

Other borrowed nouns also have an English plural, and style guides choose between the two. The federal style manual prefers octopuses, stadiums and syllabuses, and for a few words it keeps the borrowed plural for one field only, such as indices in scientific use. When both forms appear among the options, the style the question follows decides.

The trap is assuming the borrowed plural is always the correct one, or adding an s to a word that is already plural.

Rule: say the plural aloud to choose between s and es, apply the y rule as you would for any suffix, and check whether a borrowed noun has an English plural before choosing the borrowed one.

A sound-alike question cannot be solved from the letters, because every option is a real word. Read the sentence, decide what the blank must mean and whether it needs a noun, a verb or an adjective, and only then choose. A capitol is a building, while capital means a city or money, so "the ___ dome" and "raise ___" ask for two distinct words.

Learn confusable words as pairs, each tied to its meaning: elicit means to draw out and illicit means illegal; complement means to complete and compliment means to praise. A question will place one beside the other, so knowing both is the point. Some pairs differ only by two swapped letters, such as casual, meaning informal, and causal, which has to do with a cause. A spell checker passes both, so read the chosen word back into the sentence.

Apostrophes in pronouns split two ways. Possessive pronouns such as ours, theirs and whose never take one, so when a short sound-alike carries an apostrophe, it marks missing letters: who's stands for who is. To choose, expand the form with the apostrophe; if the full words fit the sentence, keep it. Indefinite pronouns work the other way: someone's and another's do take an apostrophe.

The trap is picking the form you see most often, which may not be the word the sentence needs.

Rule: decide the meaning first and the spelling second; a possessive pronoun such as ours or whose takes no apostrophe, so keep one only when the expanded words fit the sentence.

A word taken from French keeps French letters. In machine the ch sounds like sh, and in routine, police and unique a stressed i sounds like "ee". French endings such as eur and eau survive too, as in amateur and plateau. When a word sounds French, expect those patterns rather than English sound rules.

Many science words come from Greek, and English writes their f sound as ph and their k sound as ch: phantom, chorus. Some also start with a silent p, as psychic does. For a technical word with an f or k sound, try ph or ch before the plain letter: offered filosophy and philosophy, you write philosophy.

American usage has preferred forms of its own, such as honor, center, offense, canceled and judgment, where other styles may prefer another form. An option can therefore be a real spelling somewhere and still not be the one an American standard expects. When two forms both look right, ask which style the question follows.

Names have fixed spellings that their sound reveals poorly. In US federal publications, a place name is spelled as the Board on Geographic Names decides. Learn names such as Connecticut, and the days and months, as whole words, and look hardest at any letter you do not say aloud.

The trap is spelling a borrowed word or a name by English sound rules, which were never applied to it.

Rule: when a word comes from another language or names a place, expect its source spelling or its official form, and learn it whole.