How to Spell

English is very confusing and sometimes inconsistent, and that’s what those who learn English for the first time see it. While you certainly have to get good at speaking and writing skills, you can still dramatically improve your spelling by learning some rules (and exceptions), by using tips or memory aids, and by practicing reading the words that you find difficult as much as possible. If you persevere, you’ll catch those dumb vowels, confusing consonants, and complex pronunciations!

Table of Contents

Spelling Principles

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The principle of learning the letter “i” before “e”. The rule that the letter “i” comes before the “e”, except when it comes after the “c” is a useful rule worth remembering. That means the “i” usually comes before the “e” when the two are next to each other in a word (eg: “friend” or “piece”), unless they come after the “c”, in this case the “e” will come before the “i” (like: “receive”). Keeping this rule in mind will help you spell many common words where the placement of the letters “i” and “e” can be confusing.

Read it aloud: Another way to remember where the letters “i” and “e” are located is to read the word out loud. If the “e” and “i” combination sounds like a long “a” (“ay”), the “e” will be placed before the “i”. For example, the words “eight” or “weigh”.
Catch the Exceptions: Like most rules, however, there are exceptions – words that don’t follow the “i” rule come before the “e” except for the “c” rule. . Such words include: “either”, “leisure”, “protein”, “their” and “weird”. Unfortunately, there are no tricks to help you remember those words, you have to learn.
There are even more exceptions: Other exceptions include words with the letters “cien” such as “ancient”, “efficient”, “science”, and words with the letters “eig” (even if the the letters “e” and “i” don’t make the sound “ay”) like “height” and “foreign”.

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Learn how to handle diphthongs. When you come across a word with a diphthong (or two vowels next to each other) it can sometimes be difficult to tell which word comes first. Fortunately, there is a rhyme, so you can use it to remember which vowel comes first:

When two vowels go side by side, the previous letter is pronounced. This means that any vowel that you hear when you read a word comes first, the vowel you don’t hear when you read it comes after.
Learn to listen to long vowels: In other words, when there are two vowels next to each other, the first letter in the word is a long vowel and the second vowel is not pronounced. When you say the word “boat,” for example, the “o” will be pronounced and the “a” will not.
So if you’re not sure how to arrange vowels in a word, read the word out loud – what long vowel do you hear? Write that word first. Words that prove that principle include: team (you hear an “e”), mean (you hear an “e”) and wait (you hear an “a”).
Exception: As always, there is always an exception to a rule that you simply have to learn. Some of these include the words: “you” (you hear the “u” sound but not the “o”), “phoenix” (you hear the “e” sound, not the “o”), and “great” (sound “a” rather than sound “e”).

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Be careful with compound consonant pairs. Usually, when a pair of consonants is pronounced, one letter will not be read – and this figuratively means “carrying along” the sound of the other letter.

“Pairing the sound” can make words with consonant pairs harder to spell, as it’s easy to forget consonants you don’t hear and just write down what you can hear.
So you need to familiarize yourself with these compound consonant pairs and learn some of the most common consonant pairs to be able to spell words correctly.
A few of the most common consonant pairs include:
Gn, pn and kn – in these pairs of consonants you can only hear the “n” sound, the consonant before the “n” is not pronounced. Words that include these consonant pairs include: “gnome”, “pneumonia” and “knife”.
Rh and wr – in these pairs of consonants you can only hear the “r” sound, the other consonants are not pronounced. Words that include these consonant pairs include: “rhyme” and “wrestle”.
Ps and sc – in these pairs of consonants you can only hear the “s” sound, the letters “p” and “c” are silent. Words that include these consonant pairs include: “psychic” and “science”.
Wh – in this pair of consonants you can only hear the “h” sound, the “w” sound is not read. An example in this case is the word “whpe”.

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Pay attention to homonyms (homonym and homophone). Other homonyms are words that can be difficult to spell. However, before you can learn to spot homonyms, you must first understand their definitions.

A homonym is two or more words that are spelled and pronounced the same but have different meanings. A good example is the words bank (meaning bank) and bank (meaning bank).
A homophone, on the other hand, is two or more words, such as night and knight, that sound the same but have different meanings. Sometimes they are spelled the same – for example, the words “rose” (meaning rose) and “rose” (meaning the past participle of rise) – and sometimes they are spelled differently, like the words : “to”, “too” and “two”.
As a result, all homonyms are also homophones because they are pronounced the same. However, not all homophones are homonyms because not all homophones are spelled the same (while homonyms are spelled the same). ^{[1] X Research Source}
Examples: Some other common homonyms include: “here” and “hear”; “eight” and “ate”; “wear,” “ware,” and “where”; “lose” and “loose”; and “sent,” “scent,” and “cent.”
Take a look at a few other common homonymous pairs to learn how to use them:
- How to use You’re and Your
- How to use There, Their and They’re
- How to use Than and Then
- How to use Affect and Effect
- How to use It and It’s

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Be careful with prefixes. A prefix is the part you add before other words to change the meaning of those words. For example, adding the prefix “un-” to the word “happy” produces the word “unhappy” (meaning “unhappy”). Adding a prefix before a word can make spelling a little more difficult, but there are a few rules you can learn to make spelling easier:

Don’t add or subtract letters: Remember that the spelling of a word doesn’t change when you add a prefix, even if you put two identical letters next to it. In other words, never add or subtract text, even if you think the result will look weird. For example, look at the spelling of the following words: “missstep”, “preeminent” and “unnecessary”.
Know when to use hyphen: In certain cases, you need to add a hyphen between the prefix and the base word. Such cases include: when the prefix is used before a proper noun or a count (e.g. un-American), when the prefix “ex-” means “former” (e.g. ex-military), when use the prefix “self-” (e.g. self-indulgent, self-important), when it is necessary to separate two “a”, two “i” or some other phrase to increase readability (eg. : ultra-ambitious, anti-intelligent or co-worker). ^{[2] X Research Source}

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Learn how to write plural nouns correctly. Learning how to write plural nouns correctly is an unusual spelling task that can be difficult for you because there are different ways to write plural nouns in English (although the most common way is to add the letter “s”) ).

Look at the last letters of a word: The key to writing plural nouns is to look at the last word or two of the word you want to describe in the plural, as this will provide a clue to you getting it right. Some of the most common principles include:
Most singular nouns ending in letters like “ch”, “sh”, “s”, “x” or “z” can be made plural by adding the letters “es”. For example, the word “box” would become “boxes”, “bus” to “buses” and “prize” to “prizes”.
Most singular nouns ending in a vowel before the letter “y” can be made plural simply by adding the letter “s”. For example, the word “boy” would become “boys” and “day” would become “days”.
Most singular nouns that end in a consonant before the letter “y” can be made plural by omitting the “y” and adding the letters “ies”. For example, the word “baby” would become “babies”, “country” to “countries” and “spy” to “spies”.
Most singular nouns ending in “f” or “fe” can be made plural by omitting the “f” or “fe” and adding “ves”. For example, the word “elf” becomes “elves”, “loaf” becomes “loaves” and “thief” becomes “thieves”.
Singular nouns ending in “o” can be made plural by adding the letter “s”. For example, the word “kangaroo” would become “kangaroos” and the word “piano” would become “pianos”. However, sometimes if a word ends in a consonant before the letter “o”, the way to change to a correct plural noun is to add “es”. For example, the word “potato” would become “potatoes” and “hero” to “heroes”. ^{[3] X Research Sources}

Practice Spelling

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Break the word into syllables and find the word in the word. Just because a word is long doesn’t mean it’s hard to spell – all you need to do is break the word up into syllables, and find the smaller words in the root word.

Breaking it down into smaller words: For example, the word “baseball” can be broken down into two smaller words: “base,” and “ball,” which shouldn’t be difficult to read, right!
Breaking up into syllables: Even if you can’t break it down into small words, it’s helpful to break a long word into syllables. For example, you can break the word “hospital” into “hos-pit-al”, or the word “university” into “u-ni-ver-si-ty”.
Break words into parts: You can even remember a 14-letter word like “hypothyroidism” by breaking it down into smaller parts: prefix, complete word, and suffix: “hypo-” , “thyroid,” and “-ism.”
Keep in mind that you can greatly improve your spelling by learning common prefixes and suffixes, as many words will include one or both of those parts.

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Read the words aloud. Reading aloud the pronunciation of a word (in an exaggerated way) can help you spot the rhyme. However, this only helps when you pronounce the word correctly.

Therefore, you need to do your best to get in the habit of pronouncing words correctly (don’t skip consonants or vowels if you’re not allowed to) and you’ll spell words better.
Examples: Some words that are commonly mispronounced—and therefore misspelled—include: “probably” (often pronounced “probly”), “different” (often pronounced “difrent”), “Wednesday” (usually pronounced “Wensday”) and “library” (commonly pronounced “libry”).
Other words to watch out for when using this method are words we tend to read too quickly, like “interesting” or “comfortable”. Because we often read these words too quickly, it is difficult to spell them correctly.
Read slowly: When reading such words aloud, try to read them slowly and emphasize each syllable. Pronounce the word “interesting” slowly as “in-TER-esting” and you won’t forget the “e” in the middle, and pronouncing “comfortable” as “com-FOR-ta-ble” will help you remember the words. where is the vowel?

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Use mnemonic tips or mnemonic rules . Memorable rules are tools that help you remember important information, such as how to spell a word. This method comes in many forms, some of which are described below:

Silly Sentences: A fun rule of thumb for remembering specific difficult words is to create sentences where the first letter of each word matches the word in the word you want to spell. For example, to remember how to spell “because”, you could use the phrase “Big Elephants Can Always Understand Small Elephants”. Or to remember the word “physical”, you can use the sentence: “Please Have Your Strawberry Ice Cream And Lplipops”. The more silly the sentence, the better!
Ingenious tips: Several other creative memory aids use hints found within words to aid in correct spelling. For example, if you have trouble remembering the difference between the word “desert” (meaning desert) and the word “dessert” (meaning dessert), just remember that the word “dessert” has two letters ” s” because you always want to eat more dessert again. ^{[4] X Research Sources}
If you have trouble with the word “separate”, remember there is a mouse (a rat) in the middle. If you always forget the difference between the words “stationery” and “stationary”, remember that the word “stationery” pronounced with an “e” refers to envelopes or the like. And if you have trouble distinguishing between the words “principal” (meaning principal) and “principle” (meaning principle), just remember that the principal or company director is your “friend” (pal). .

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Try to remember words that are often misspelled. Even if you learn all the rules and try every spelling trick, there will still be words that you feel confused and often misspelled. With these words, memorization is the only way to remember.

Identify problem words: First, you need to identify the words that you have the most difficulty with. You can do this by reviewing previously written texts and testing your spelling. This will be easier if you have the electronic file and run a spell checker, but the best way is to have a spelling expert (who is very good at spelling) help you with the corrections. What words do you most tend to mispronounce?
Make a list: Once you identify the most commonly misspelled words, make a clear list, then rewrite each word (correctly spelled) at least 10 times. Read each word out loud, “look closely” at the syllables, and do your best to memorize the spelling of these words.
There are days when you have to grind iron so the needle: Just do that every day. What you’re doing is “training” your memory and hands to read and spell correctly. Finally, you may want to test yourself by having someone read the words aloud (or record yourself) and write down the words you hear. Then review the word you misspelled.
Use stickers or flashcards: Another method that can be used to learn how to spell difficult words is to use stickers or flashcards. Put stickers with spelled words on household items every day, such as “faucet” (faucet), “duvet” (fur blanket), “television” (television) and ” mirror” (mirror). Each time you use the items you will be prompted to read the words. You can try tagging information cards with 2 or 3 difficult words to spell next to the sink or above the coffee machine – every time you brush your teeth or wait for your coffee you can remember the exact spelling of the words!
Use your senses: You can try ‘writing out’ words with your fingers — trace letters on books, tables, even in the sand! The more senses you use, the better you train your memory.

Advice

Repeat. Sometimes we are in a hurry when we write, so it’s easy to confuse words that sound the same like ‘reef’ for ‘wreath’; and you might not realize you’ve made a mistake until you double-check it and find it out and say in surprise, “Oh, did I write that?”
Check the compound words in the dictionary. There’s really no way to tell if it’s “stomachache,” “stomach-ache,” or “stomach ache” unless you look in the dictionary. There are a lot of changes in the rules of joining these days, so check out newly published English-English or English-American dictionaries.
Knowing the spelling of some other language and knowing its native language is also helpful. You can use tips obtained from different languages. In French, for example, the “sh” sound is read as “ch”, thus creating words like “cliché” and “chic”.
Don’t be afraid to use a dictionary. English words come from many different languages. The oldest English words come from the Anglos (Northern Germans), Saxons (Southern Germans), the French Normans or Bordos who settled in England. There are also many other words of Latin or Greek origin. A good dictionary can tell you where a word comes from, and when you start learning that word, you’ll also recognize word patterns.
There are so many ways to write a single sound that, in theory, you could pronounce the word “ghoti” as “fish” (if you pronounce the gh as in tou gh , the o as in w o men and the letter ti) . as in na ti on). ^{[5] X Research Sources}
Think of yourself correcting someone else’s spelling. Sometimes the best way to learn is to try to teach others. Practice finding mistakes in other people’s spelling, even in books. (Sometimes that happens too.) You can start by checking the spelling of wikiHow articles. Simply click on the “edit” tab and you can edit immediately. Consider creating an account so you can become part of the wikiHow community.
Reading books, newspapers, catalogs, bulletin boards, window ads all help you learn to spell. If you’re looking for an unfamiliar word, write it down, even if you only have a napkin. When you get home, look it up in the dictionary. The more you refer, the more you read, the better you will spell.
Take the letters in a word and write them in sentences. For example, you can learn to spell the word “arithmetic” with the sentence “A rat in the house might eat the ice cream.” Or, “I want accommodation in castles and mansions.” ‘ (I want to stay in castles and mansions) will remind you that there are 2 ‘cs’ and 2 ‘m’s in accommodation.

Warning

Don’t think that a printed word in a book is always spelled correctly; The book also has spelling errors like other articles. That still happens!
Keep in mind that some words (“cpor,” “cpour”; “goiter,” “goitre”; “gray,” “grey”; “checkered,” “chequered”; “theater,” “theheatre”) can spelled in different ways. Both spellings are correct, but one may be more common in American English, British English, or even Australian English.
Don’t rely on spell-correcting programs as they are NOT PERFECT and can skip spellchecking things like: “Eye tpled ewe, eye am know at this.”
Even words that are clearly misspelled can still be accepted by spelling correction programs. So it’s best not to depend too much on them.
Use caution when figuring out what English spelling is being used, which means: was this article written by a British or an American? If you know that, do you know who added and/or “edited” the post? Spell checker programs are very dangerous to use.

Steps

Spelling Principles

Practice Spelling

Advice

Warning

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