I Before E...

What is the first thing that comes to your mind when you hear the phrase "I before E"? If you said, "except after C," then you are in good company. This is one of the best known spelling rules, and it dates back to 1866 -- but is it true? An article published last year in the Washington Post claiming the rule is a giant lie caught our interest. It documents the work of a statistician who looked at the usage of I before E in a list of 350,000 English words. As the title of the article implies, the "except after C" rule does not hold up very well. When the letter combinations of I and E occur after the letter C, I comes before E 75% of the time. This is about the same as the average for all English words.

350,000 Words? Seriously?

But how useful is an analysis done on 350,000 words? The Oxford English Dictionary contains only about 175,000 words, and how many of us use the word caducei in everyday usage? (It is the plural of caduceus -- a staff with two intertwined serpents that is topped with wings.) How useful is this rule for a child in late elementary school who has an average usable vocabulary of 5,000 words? The answer is, more useful than the original analysis, but not as useful as you might think. In our analysis of the 5,000 most common words in the English language, only 1/3 of the words with E and I following C are spelled with "cei." Two-thirds of the words follow the original pattern of I before E. We did find, however, that you are more likely to break the rule "I before E" with these C words than with any other letter. Even so, if you follow the rule "except after C," you are going to be wrong 2 out of 3 times.

I Before E

The Moving Beyond the Page online spelling program uses spelling rules to help children learn to spell correctly. We chose to define the rule as simply, "I before E." There are a lot of exceptions, but unfortunately, students just have to memorize them. The English language is a hodgepodge of words that originate from a diverse array of different languages and cultures. It often seems like there is no rhyme or reason to the spelling choices that have made their way into our language. Brilliant men like Benjamin Franklin offered different solutions to this problem, but at the end of the day, we are still left with rules that act more like suggestions and lots of exceptions to memorize. And one more thing... please don't misspell my name. Keith * Image credit: Swanky Bazaar * Image credit: Wikipedia