The Complete Guide to English Spelling Rules (35 page)

Spelling rule #3: Most of the words that end in
ery
are nouns that often describe either an occupation or an action:

Note that there are adjectives in the
ery
group, but they are there because the root word ends in
er
:

Words that end in
ory
are fairly evenly divided between nouns and adjectives. Most
ory
endings follow an
s
or a
t
:

There are many words that end in
ry
where the
ry
is not a suffix:

There are only a few commonly used words that end in
ury
.

Even fewer commonly used words end in
iry
:

And only two words use the
yry
spelling—
porphyry
and
eyry
. There are four ways to spell this rare word—
eyry, eyrie, aery
, and
aerie.

There are only about thirty words that use the double
r
, which occurs mostly after a short vowel:

English is a constantly changing language, and it is possible that eventually most of the words in this group will end in the simple
ry
. The archaic
jewellery
is already spelled
jewelry
, and
wintery
is gradually being replaced by
wintry
. Perhaps we may one day lose the surplus
e
in
tomfoolery
.

C
HAPTER 36

Using
ly, ally, ely, ily, lly, uly

T
he suffix
ly
is used to change an adjective into an adverb. There are a half dozen different ways to do this, and there is a reason for each one. The rules are clear. There are few anomalies.

Spelling rule #1: In the vast majority of cases, we simply add
ly
to the root word:

If the root word ends in
l
or if it has the suffix
ful,
we retain the
l
when we add
ly
. It will seem to have doubled the
l
, but this is not a double
l
. It just looks like it.

Spelling rule #2: If the root word ends in
al
, then the suffix must be
ally
:

Spelling rule #3: Words ending in
ic
always use
ally
to retain the hard
c
. There are many words in this group:

The anomaly is
public,
which becomes
publicly
.

Spelling rule #4: In most cases the silent
e
is retained: