Collins - English Spelling

HarperCollins Publishers Westerhill Road Bishopbriggs Glasgow G64 2QT First edition 2011 Reprint 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 0 HarperCollins Publishers 2011 EPUB Edition October 2011 ISBN 978-0-00-744467-0 Collins is a registered trademark of HarperCollins Publishers Limited www.collinslanguage.com A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Typeset by Davidson Publishing Solutions, Glasgow Printed in Great Britain by Clays Ltd, St Ives plc All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins. Entered words that we have reason to believe constitute trademarks have been designated as such. However, neither the presence nor absence of such designation should be regarded as affecting the legal status of any trademark. HarperCollins does not warrant that www.collinsdictionary.com, www.collinslanguage.com or any other website mentioned in this title will be provided uninterrupted, that any website will be error free, that defects will be corrected, or that the website or the server that makes it available are free of viruses or bugs.

For full terms and conditions please refer to the site terms provided on the website. Editorial staffAmerican English consultant:
Orin Hargraves Written by:
Ian Brookes Editor: Lisa Sutherland For the publisher:
Gerry Breslin
Lucy Cooper
Kerry Ferguson
Elaine Higgleton

Collins Websters Easy Learning English Spelling is suitable for everyone who wants to know more about spelling and who wants to write more accurately and impressively. The book uses simple explanations, backed up with examples demonstrating each point, to describe the important features of English spelling. It also points out the most difficult words to spell and offers ways of learning these. The book begins with a clear explanation of how the letters and groups of letters regularly correspond to certain sounds, and then looks at the reasons why the spelling of some words does not match the sound. Next, it looks at recurring patterns and rules that you need to be familiar with in order to understand and predict how the majority of words are spelled.

The last part of the book is concerned with words whose spellings are not easy to predict: it provides some practical advice on learning tricky spellings and then looks at tricky words themselves, showing why each can present pitfalls even to experienced users of English. All of the hard words that are examined in this book are listed in an alphabetical index at the end of the book. You can use this index both as a resource for checking the correct spellings of tricky words and also to point you to the books explanations and useful tips for memorizing many of the words. English spelling can sometimes appear to be a chaotic affair, with the spellings of words such as choir, colonel, laugh, and yacht having little relation to the way that the words are pronounced. Yet there are rules and patterns at work in the spelling system, and it is possible to become a good speller by mastering relatively few of these simple rules and patterns. Ian Brookes, 2011

Adding endings to words
ending in E Spelling is the process of using letters to represent a word. Ian Brookes, 2011 Adding endings to words
ending in E Spelling is the process of using letters to represent a word.

For most words there is only one arrangement of letters that is accepted as the correct spelling. Using the correct spelling of a word means that you can be confident of being understood when you write English; getting the spelling wrong can make it difficult to be understood and can create a bad impression.

There are 26 letters that are used to spell words in English: a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z Each of these letters can also be written as a capital letter. This form is used at the beginning of a sentence or a name, and in certain other places (see ). A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z Five of these letters (A, E, I, O, U) are vowels. The other letters are called consonants. The other letters are called consonants.

These are used to represent sounds that are made by closing your mouth or using your tongue.

The letter Y can act as a vowel in some words, such as sky and crypt. Most words are spelled using a mixture of vowels and consonants. This is because in most cases we need to open our mouths between pronouncing different consonants. It is not typical to find more than two vowels or two consonants together. Most consonants are strongly associated with a particular sound and represent this sound in virtually every word in which they appear.

For example, the letter B nearly always makes the same sound.

Some consonants can represent different sounds in different words. For example, C can have a hard sound like a K. But it can also have a soft sound like an S. Next page