Spelling Rules Taylor High School English Department © MJB 01/12

Rule One: ‘q’ The letter ‘q’ is always followed by the letter ‘u.’ Together they make the ‘kw’ sound. queen, acquaintance, quiet, quite, aqua, earthquake, quaint, equation, consequence, equilateral, soliloquy, acquire

Rule Two: Soft ‘c’ When the letter ‘c’ comes before the letters ‘e’, ‘i’ or ‘y’ then it is a soft ‘c’ – making the ‘s’ sound. absence, audience, convenience, consequence, concentration, conscience, vaccine, sequence, nuisance, adjacent, cycle, circulate

Rule Three: Soft ‘g’ When the letter ‘g’ comes before the letters ‘e’, ‘i’ or ‘y’ then it is a soft ‘g’ – making the ‘j’ sound technology, knowledge, energy, engagement, percentage, average,

Spelling Rule Four: ‘i’ and ‘y’ If the letters ‘i’ or ‘y’ are followed by a consonant then they normally make the ‘i’ sound. big, gym, acid, pitch, tactic, spirit, pilgrim, synagogue, rhythm, lyric, simile, myth, mill, analysis, fulfil, prefix, alliteration, citizen, disease

Rule Five: Silent ‘e’ Silent ‘e’ makes the vowel say its name bake, ache, scene, code, tune, die, alive, five, scale, score, octave, trade, climate.

Rule Six: silent ‘e’ – again ! Silent ‘e’ is used to avoid words ending in a ‘u’ or a ‘v.’ blue, true, live, give, rave, save, love, glove, issue, queue, connective, dialogue, negative, octave, league,

Rule Seven: Doubling Consonants. One syllable words need the final consonant to be doubled before adding a suffix which starts with a vowel. hop + p +ed = hopped shop + p =ing = shopping get + t + ing = getting tan + n + ing = tanning

Rule Eight: Words ending in silent final ‘e’ Words which end in a silent final ‘e’ Eg: give, take make, dance, drop the final ‘e’ when adding an ending beginning with a vowel. hope – hoping, give – giving, take – taking, make- making, dance – dancing.

Rule Nine:The sound ‘sh’ In many words the ‘sh’ sound is represented by ‘ti’ e.g: station, nation, information, education. However, where a new word is formed from a root word, the ending is linked to the root word. In the following words the ‘sh’ sound is represented by ‘ci’ Music – musician; space – spacious; finance – financial

Rule Ten: Double letters – l – f –s These are often doubled following a single vowel at the end of a one syllable word Eg: will, full, pull, off, miss

Rule Eleven – Prefixes Often it can be helpful to learn prefixes as they don’t usually change. The prefix “all” only uses one ‘l’, becoming ‘al’ Eg: almost, always, although, already,

Rule Twelve- Suffixes Often it can be helpful to learn suffixes, as they don’t usually change. The suffixes “till” and “full” only have one ‘l’. Eg: beautiful, wonderful, helpful

Rule Thirteen – ‘dge’ The letters ‘dge’ are only used after a short vowel. Eg; badge, edge, fudge, ledge. Long vowels use ‘ge’ Eg: cage, sage, rage, page.

Rule Fourteen: ‘ck.’ ‘ck’ is used only after a short vowel. Eg: back, neck, sick, rock, lock, deck, peck, pick, dock, frock, sack, crack, black, pack, wick.

Rule Fifteen: ‘ed.’ ‘ed’ at the end of words has three different sounds – namely ‘d’, ‘t’, ‘ed’ ‘d’ - if the words ends in a vocal ‘voiced’ consonant sound, the ending ‘ed’ sounds ‘d’ as in lived ‘t’ – if the base word ends in aspirate ‘unvoiced’, consonant sound, the ending ‘ed’ sounds ‘t’ as in jumped ‘ed’ if the base word ends with the sound ‘d’ or ‘t’ adding ‘ed’ makes another syllable eg: sides, part-ed