The Complete Guide to English Spelling Rules (28 page)

Note that there are also a few words that manage to produce the
o
sound in even more interesting ways:

C
HAPTER 28

Using
or, ore, oar, our

T
he
or
sound can be spelled in a number of ways, for example
for, fore,
and
four,
also
soar, war, wharf, ought, taut,
and
caught
. This variety of spellings should pose no problem because there is a pattern.

Spelling rule #1: By far the most popular of these spellings is the simple
or
. It is used at the beginning, in the middle, and at the end of words.

Spelling rule #2: The
ore
spelling is also extremely common. It is always used at the end of a word:

Note that
furore
is the British spelling. Americans spell the word without the
e
:
furor
.

There is only one commonly used English word that begins with
ore
. It is
ore
.

Spelling rule #3: The
oa
spelling and the
ou
spellings are usually found in the middle of a word.

Note that the
ou
spelling can produce a variety of sounds, for example
soup, source, sour,
and
journey
. Quite often, the pronunciation will vary from region to region.

Spelling rule #4: The
ar
spelling with the
or
sound is usually found after
w, wh,
and
qu
:

The spellings
aught
and
ought
can both be used to produce the
or
sound without the
r.

A small group of words use the
au
spelling without the
gh
or the
r
to produce the same sound.

C
HAPTER 29

Using
y, ee, i, ea ie, ey

T
here are seven different ways we can produce the long
ee
sound at the end of a word. This must seem rather excessive, but there is a pattern and there are surprisingly few anomalies.

Sometimes the sound is the same but the spelling differs. Take that famous alcoholic beverage. In the United States and Ireland, it is spelled whiskey, but the Canadians, the Scots, and the English spell it whisky. The original Scots Gaelic word was uisge, and the Irish Gaelic word was uisce. Just to make it more interesting, the Scots call it scotch, a word that they never, ever use to describe things Scottish.

Spelling rule #1: The most common way in which to produce the long
e
sound at the end of a word is by using the letter
y
:

Note that almost any word can be made into an adjective by the addition of the
y
: