English Is Killing Me
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Some Basic Spelling Rules

Spelling can try to kill you, but it is easy to defend yourself if you know some simple rules.  Let's look at sentence number one.

1.  My brother recieved a magicle letter from a strange school. 

You probably see the errors, right?  The first problem we have in this sentence is recieve.  It should be spelled receive.  Well, what is the rule? 


Rule #1:  Use i before e, except after c.  This means if you have a word such as believe, you will place the i before the e.  However, with a word like receive, there is a c before the two vowels, so you place e before i.   Let's look beyond this rule to additional rules.

Rule #2: There are exceptions to the i before e rule.  When a word has an ei sound like the ay sound in way, keep the e before the i.  For instance,  the word eight has a sound similar to the ay in way. 

What is the next problem?  Well, the word magicle doesn't exist. :(         Sorry magicle.   This leads us to another rule.

Rule #3:  When a word ends in -ic, the suffix to make adjectives is -al, and for adverbs it is  -ally.  Therefore, we would write magical.  What about the word comic?  It would be comical or comically.