Page 567 - Word Power Made Easy: The Complete Handbook for Building a Superior Vocabulary

ourselves poor spellers will have to. We’ll just have to get up and go to the mountain.

Is it hard to become a good speller? I have demonstrated over and over again in my
classes that anyone of normal intelligence and average educational background can become
a good speller in very little time.
What makes the task so easy?
First—investigations have proved that 95 per cent of the spelling errors that educated
people make occur in just one hundred words. Not only do we all misspell the same words
—but we misspell them in about the same way.

Second—correct spelling relies exclusively on memory, and the most e ective way to
train memory is by means of association or, to use the technical term, mnemonics.
If you fancy yourself an imperfect or even a terrible speller, the chances are very great
that you’ve developed a complex solely because you misspell some or all of the hundred
words with which this Intermission deals. When you have conquered this single list, and I

shall immediately proceed to demonstrate how easy it is, by means of mnemonics, to do so,
95 per cent of your spelling difficulties will in all likelihood vanish.
Let us start with twenty- ve words from the list. In the rst column you will nd the
correct spelling of each, and in the second column the simple mnemonic that will
forevermore fix that correct spelling in your memory.

CORRECT SPELLING MNEMONIC

Two words, no matter what it means. Keep in mind that it’s the
1. all right
opposite of all wrong.

Of course you can spell cool—simply add the adverbial ending -
2. coolly
ly.

This is the only word in the language ending in -sede (the only
3. supersede
one, mind you—there isn’t a single other one so spelled).

4. succeed The only three words in the entire

5. proceed language ending in -ceed. When you

think of the three words in the order given here, the initial
6. exceed
letters form the beginning of SPEED.

7. cede, precede, recede, All other words with a similar-sounding final syllable end in

etc. -cede.

One of the double e’s of proceed moves to the end in the noun
8. procedure
form, procedure.

9. stationery This is the word that means paper, and notice the -er in paper.

In this spelling, the words means standing, and notice the -a in