With the exception of daily, the exceptions to the final rule -y are words you probably won`t use when writing: dry, dry, shy, shy, smart, smart, cheerful, and cheerful. In the end, there is only one truly infallible rule in the English language: most of the words that seem to be exceptions to this “rule” have roots in Old English, such as eight, weight, neighbor, sleigh, and strange. Another famous exception is grasping, which, although it comes from Latin to French to English, ultimately seems to be due to Germanic roots. You can avoid most spelling mistakes for words that contain the vowel combination -ie or -ei by learning the rule summarized in the jingle. Go to the second part — “except after c.” Cunningham selected every word in its dataset with a “cei” or “cie” notation. If the rule were as precise as we`ve led us to believe, you`d expect “cei” spellings to far outperform “cie” spellings, right? With words like strange, weight, and Rottweiler, it seems that “i before e, except after w” is a more precise rule than the one we all know. There are many exceptions to this rule – it may be best thought of as a guideline – but it can be useful with words like the following. This “rule” is best seen as an easy way to remember the spelling pattern of a category of related common words that came into English from French, including receiving, perceiving, understanding and deceiting, as well as deceiting, vanity and receiving. The rule does not apply to words like warm and neat, as they do not end with the cvc combination. Of course, as with most English spelling and grammar rules, there are exceptions! Here are some strange uses of ei and ie. But like many, many other rules in the English language, it turns out to be built on a foundation of lies. The familiar mnemonic of primary school is a “supreme and solitary spelling rule for many,” linguist Edward Carney wrote in “A survey of English spelling.” Its primacy was recognized in English grammar textbooks from 1866 (James Stuart Laurie`s “Manual of English Spelling”) to the present day (Bryan Garner`s “Modern English Usage”). Smart people tried to adjust the rule so that it actually follows English spelling.

Here we have this variant: The first task is to check the relationship between the spellings “ie” and “ei” – do I usually occur before e? The good news is that it is – in about three-quarters of all words with a pair “ie” or “ei”, the correct spelling is “ie”, as the rule would have you believe. Merriam-Webster once jokingly tried to explain all exceptions with the following jingle: If the vowel of NEAR (/ɪər/) is considered a “long e”, then words ending in -cier can also be exceptions. Possible examples are: more chic if pronounced with two syllables instead of three; or financial, if stressed on the last syllable or pronounced with a cheerful accent. The proverb i before e, except after c, is intended to help us spell correctly, but it only reliably identifies the category of words that include receiving and conceited. This is a good quick reminder of this common pattern, but keep in mind that there are many exceptions to this “rule”, such as stop, height, etc. A question we are often asked is why so many English words do not follow the “i before e” rule: i before e, except after c. Well, the English language can be inconsistent. This is what makes English such a lively and expressive language, but it can also make it a nightmare to learn it. We have been influenced by languages with spelling paradigms so different that we don`t have correct spelling. Regardless of which version of the rule is used, there are exceptions such as caffeine, guidelines, seizures, cash, and quirks. Some words are exceptions in some versions of the rule, but not others, such as leisure and Rottweiler. In other words, they may or may not be exceptions, depending on the version of the rule used and how a person pronounces it.

Some authorities reject the rule because it contains too many exceptions to be worth learning. [2] [3] [4] [5] The rule is well known; Edward Carney calls it “that highest and loneliest spelling rule for many people.” [1] In 1932, Leonard B. Wheat examined the rules and word lists of various American elementary school books. He calculated that of the 3,876 words listed, 128 had ei or ie in spelling; of these, 83 corresponded to I-avant-E, 6 to extra-to-C, and 12 sounded like A. He found 14 words with i-e in separate syllables and 2 with e-i in separate syllables. This left 11 “irregular” words: 3 with co. (old, conscientious, efficiency) and 8 with ei (i.e., foreigner, foreigner, size, leisure, neither of them, grasp theirs). Wheat concluded: “If it weren`t for the fact that the rule`s jingle makes it easy to remember (although it is not necessarily easy to apply), the author would recommend reducing the rule to `I usually come before e` or abandoning it altogether.” [2] The following sections list exceptions to the basic form. Many are no exception to extended forms.

Some large groups of words have cie in the spelling. Few common words have the IEC notation managed by the rule: verbs ending in -ceive and their derivatives (perceive, deceive, transceivers, receipts, etc.) and upper limit. The BBC`s QI programme claimed that there were 923 words with the spelling cie, 21 times more words than the stated exception to the rule written with iec. [34] These numbers were generated by an IQ fan from a list of Scrabble words. [35] The statistics were taken up by UberFacts. [36] But over the decades, advocates of the rule have tried to save it by proposing various changes. “I before e, except after c, if the sound is `ee`”, as a formulation would say. Or: “I before e, except after c, or if it sounds like A, as in neighbor or weigh.” The exceptions to this rule are words in which -e should be kept but omitted: recognition, argument, terrible, due, judgment, ninth, true, complete, and wisdom. There is a mnemonic device that has been taught to help individuals learn the spelling of certain words. This rule is: “I before E, except after C.” Many people don`t know that the saying is longer than this sentence. The whole saying goes: “I before E, except after C or if it sounds like A, as in neighbor and weigh.

And funny, it`s just weird. While this saying is useful when it comes to remembering certain spellings, there are a few exceptions to this rule. We will discuss these exceptions below. The way you look at your teacher when he explains all the exceptions to the “me before E” rule. I before e, except after c Or if it sounds like “a” as in “neighbor” and “weigh”, unless the “c” is part of a “sh” sound as in “glacier” Or it appears in comparisons and superlatives as “fanciful” And even if the vowels sound like “e” as in “grasp” or “i” as in “pitch” Or also in the inflections “-ing”, which end in “-e”, as in “cueing” or in compound words as in “albeit ” or sometimes in technical words with strong etymological links with their mother tongues as in “cuneiform” or in other numerous and random exceptions such as “science”, “decadence” and “strange”. Exceptions to this rule are words in which a consonant should not be duplicated, but reads as follows: Cancellation, Crystallization, Equipment, Excellence, Excellent and Questionnaire. There are also two words in which a consonant should be doubled, but is not: transferable and transferable. A University of Warwick statistician named Nathan Cunningham recently decided to put the i-before-e rule to the test. So he put a list of 350,000 English words in a statistical program to see if mathematics worked. Most words containing the letters “CIEN” are spelled correctly and do not follow the “I before E except after C” rule.

We have included below a list of some of these words. Nice try, but it`s still full of exceptions. For the above jingle to be accurate, it would have to be something like: “I before E, except after C” is a basic mnemonic rule for English spelling. If one is not sure whether a word is written with the digraph ei or ie, the rhyme indicates that the correct order is ie, unless the preceding letter is c, in which case it is ei. For example: The vowel represented by ie in words with the spelling cie is rarely the vowel “e long” of FLEECE (/iː/), so few words are exceptions to the version of the rule limited to this sound. Among them are species, species. Cunningham is far from the first to challenge i-before-e orthodoxy.