Spelling Level 1

Spelling Rules for Everyone

Short and Long Vowels

1. To spell a short vowel sound, only one letter is needed:

                at        red         it         hot        up

2. To spell a long sound you must add a second vowel. The second may be next to the first, in the VVC pattern (boat, maid, cue, etc.) or it may be separated from the first one by a consonant in the VCV pattern (made, ride, tide, etc.). If the second vowel is separated from the first by two spaces, it does not affect the first one. This is the VCCV pattern in which the first vowel remains short. Thus, doubling a consonant can be called "protecting" a short vowel because it prevents an incoming vowel from getting close enough to the first one to change its sound from short to long:

      maid,  made,  but  madder;         dine,  diner,  but dinner.

Adding Endings

There are two kinds of suffixes, those that begin with a vowel and those that begin with a consonant. As usual, the spelling problems occur with the vowels:

Vowel Suffixes			Consonant Suffixes
- - - age	- - -ist		- - - ness	- - - cess
- - - ant	- - - ish		- - -less	- - -ment
- - -ance	- - -ing		- - -ly	- - -ty
- - - al	- - -ar		- - -ful	- - -ry
- - -ism	- - -o		- - -hood	- - -ward
- - -able	- - -on		- - -wise
- - -an	- - -ous
- - - a	- - -or
- - -es	- - -ual
- - -ed	- - -unt
- - -er	- - -um
- - -est	- - -us
- - -y	- - -ive

1. Words that end in the letter y must have the y changed to i before adding any suffix:

body - bodily	marry - marriage
many - manifold	family -  familiar
happy - happiness	puppy - puppies
beauty - beautiful	vary - various
company - companion	fury - furious
plenty - plentiful	merry - merriment

2. In words that end in a silent e you must drop it before you add a vowel suffix. The silent e is no longer needed to make the preceding vowel long as the incoming vowel will do the trick:

ride - riding	cure - curable	use - usual	age - aging
fame - famous	force - forcing	refuse -  refusal	slice - slicing
pure - purity	ice - icicle	nose - nosy	convince - convincing
globe - global	race - racist	pole - polar	offense - offensive

3. Words that end in an accented short or modified vowel sound must have the final consonant doubled to protect that sound when you add a vowel suffix:

Quebec - Quebecker	remit - remittance	confer - conferring	refer - referred
upset - upsetting	shellac - shellacking	occur - occurred	concur- concurrent

Note that this doubling is not done if the accent is not on the last syllable. If the word ends in a schwa, there is no need to "protect" it.

open - opening	organ - organize
focus - focused	refer - referee

4. Normally you drop a silent e before adding a vowel suffix. However, if the word ends in -ceor -ge and the incoming vowel is an a, o, or u, you cannot cavalierly toss out that silent e. It is not useless: it is keeping its left-hand letter soft, and your a, o, or u will not do that. Thus:

manage - manageable	peace - peaceable
courage - courageous	revenge - vengeance
surge - surgeon	change - changeable
notice - noticeable	outrage - outrageous

Gorgeous George bludgeoned a pigeon noticeably! Tsk.

5. Adding consonant suffixes is easy. You just add them. (Of course you must change a final y to i before you add any suffix.)

peace - peaceful	harm - harmless	age - ageless
pity - pitiful	child - childhood	rifle - riflery

/sh/

When this sound occurs before a vowel suffix, it is spelled ti, si, or ci.

partial	cautious	patient	vacation
special	deficient	suspicion	suction
inertia	delicious	ratio	pension
musician	physician	optician	quotient
electrician	nutrition	statistician	expulsion

/ee/ before a vowel suffix

When /ee/ precedes a vowel suffix, it is usually spelled with the letter i:

Indian	obvious	medium
ingredient	zodiac	material

Spelling Determined by Word Meaning

1. Mist and missed sound alike, as do band and banned. To determine the spelling, remember that -ed is a past-tense tending.

1. The mist drifted into the harbor.
2. I nearly missed my bus.
3. The movie was banned in Boston.
4. The band played on.

2. The endings of dentist and finest sound alike. Deciding which one to use can be tricky. One rule helps but doesn't cover all cases:

1. --ist is a suffix meaning someone who does something:
2.   artist -   machinist -   druggist
3. --est is the ending used on superlative adjectives:
4.   finest -   sweetest -   longest

3. The sounds at the end of musician and condition sound alike. but....

1. cian always means a person, where...
2. tion or sion are never used for people.

4. How do you tell whether to use tion or sion?

1. If the root word ends in /t/, use -tion: complete, completion
2. If the root word ends in /s/ or /d/, use sion: extend, extension
3. suppress, suppression
4. If the sound of the last syllable is the "heavy" sound of /zhun/ rather than the light sound, /shun/, use s: confusion, vision, adhesion

Exception: The ending, --mit becomes -mission:

permit - permission	omit - omission
submit - submission	commit - commission

3. The plural ending is always spelled with a single letter s unless you can hear a new syllable on the plural word. In that case, use -es:

loss, losses	bank, banks	twitch, twitches	tree, trees
box, boxes	list, lists	judge, judges

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