Page 67 - Improve_Your_Written_English [Marion_Field]

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Checking Your Spelling

ESTABLISHING THE GROUND RULES
English spelling is not easy to learn. There are some rules
but often there are many exceptions to the rule. Some spell-
ings and pronunciation appear to be illogical. It is therefore
important that certain spellings are learnt.

Creating words
There are twenty-six letters in our alphabet. Five are vowels
and the rest are consonants. The vowels are A, E, I, O, U.
All words have to contain at least one vowel. (‘Y’ is
considered to be a vowel in words like ‘rhythm’ and
‘psychology’). Consonants are all the other letters that are
not vowels. So that a word can be pronounced easily, vowels
are placed between consonants. No more than three con-
sonants can be placed together. Below are two lists. The first
contains words with three consecutive consonants and in the
second are words with two consecutive consonants. The sets
of consonants are separated by vowels:
(a) Christian, chronic, school, scream, splash, through.
(b) add, baggage, commander, flap, grab, occasion.

Forming plurals
To form a plural word an ‘s’ is usually added to a noun. But
there are some exceptions.

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