Ask me to get high grades and earn an achievement award at a top 5 law school, pass the California Bar, and secure a post at a "top 3" national law firm? No problem. Ask me to spell the following words without the aid of a spell checker? Evidently, I will fall to peices, er...pieces.
Either I missed the memo on all the exceptions to the rule, or the adage "I before E, except after C" is working a cruel injustice upon millions of young children in our soceity society. I decided to consult the experts.
According to expert Bob Cunningham, "I before E, except after C" is pretty damn inaccurate, and does not apply:
- To words that are not digraphs;
- examples: (i) diety; (ii) conscience;
- to some words which have an "Ay" (as in Jay or May) sound;
- examples: (i) neighborhood; (ii) weigh;
- to some words derived from non-English languages;
- example: dreidel; and
- to plurals of words ending in "cy";
- example: democracies.
Why wasn't I clued into these massive loopholes?! This epiphany caused me to review the hundreds of documents I have penned by hand, without the aid of a spell checker. And what I discovered shocked me-- rampant misspellings of words like:
- beige
- codeine
- conscience
- deify
- deity
- feign
- feisty
- foreign
- forfeit
- heifer
- heigh-ho
- height
- heinous
- heir
- heist
- leitmotiv
- neighbor
- neither
- prescient
- rein
- seismic
- seize
- sheik
- sovereign
- veil
- vein
- weird
For a more detailed discussion of the exceptions to "I before E, except after C", go here. I'm too busy putting a hit out on Mrs. Dupee, my good-for-nothing 3rd grade teacher.


geez!!!
Posted by: Courtney | 18/08/2007 at 06:34 PM
it's "i before e, except after c or when sounding like ay as is neighbor and weigh"
Posted by: jojo Puhfang | 03/10/2007 at 02:48 PM