TURN ON YOUR SPELL CHECKER, but proceed with caution when using it. Spell checkers can be extremely helpful, but they are not infallible, and they do not substitute for meticulous proofreading and clear thinking—witness a complaint from an outraged professor that a student had continually misspelled miscellaneous as mescaline (a hallucinogenic drug). The student’s spell checker did not pick up the error (and probably autocorrected to mescaline based on what the student first typed), but the professor certainly did. Always proofread with your own two eyes or by showing your work to someone else: Geneseo has peer writing tutors in the Writing Learning Center. When in doubt, look up the word for its spelling and meaning, and to make sure that you haven’t become confused or substituted a similar word by accident: malapropisms are often amusing, but they don’t adhere to the conventions of standard academic English. Be open to the idea that you, as an undergraduate, have not yet learnt all the useful vocabulary in the English language, and, more importantly, that no professor expects you to have done so. Mistakes will occur: not recognizing the word mescaline makes it harder to pick up that it isn’t how you spell miscellaneous, a word the student had possibly never written out. But the student probably experienced some moment of uncertainty about how to spell miscellaneous, and should therefore have been suspicious enough of the spell checker’s suggestion to notice that nothing in mescaline matches the “-eous” sound they need. Lexicographers put a lot of work into creating dictionaries—make their day by using one.

A helpful hint: along with a spell checker, your word-processing program probably has a “find” function in its editing tools. Almost all “find” functions can be accessed by pressing command + f or following these steps: edit → find → find…. If you discover an error in one iteration of a word, use the “find” function to locate other erroneous iterations and then fix them. This tip is also very helpful when you routinely mistype a word, e.g. “teh” instead of “the.” You can “find all” iterations of “teh” and fix them.

Six Rules for Spelling

The Instant Spelling Dictionary, now in its third edition but first published in 1964, includes six basic spelling rules, adapted below. Even without memorizing the rules, you can improve your spelling simply by reviewing them and scanning the examples and exceptions until the fundamental concepts begin to sink in.

Rule 1

In words ending with a silent e, you usually drop the e when you add a suffix that begins with a vowel:

• survive + al = survival
• divide + ing = dividing
• fortune + ate = fortunate

Here are a few common exceptions:

Rule 2

In words ending with a silent e, you usually retain the e before a suffix than begins with a consonant.

• arrange + ment = arrangement
• forgive + ness = forgiveness
• safe + ty = safety

Here are a few common exceptions:

• ninth (from nine)
• argument (from argue)
• wisdom (from wise)
• wholly (from whole)

Rule 3

In words of two or more syllables that are accented on the final syllable and end in a single consonant preceded by a single vowel, you double the final consonant before a suffix beginning with a vowel.

• refer + ing = referring
• regret + able = regrettable

However, if the accent is not on the last syllable, the final consonant is not doubled.

• benefit + ed = benefited
• audit + ed = audited

Rule 4

In words of one syllable ending in a single consonant that is preceded by a single vowel, you double the final consonant before a suffix that begins with a vowel. (The rule sounds more complex than it is; just look at the examples.)

• big + est = biggest
• hot + er = hotter
• bag + age = baggage

Rule 5

In words ending in y preceded by a consonant, you usually change the y to i before any suffix that does not begin with an i.

• beauty + ful = beautiful
• accompany + ment = accompaniment
• accompany + ing = accompanying (suffix begins with i)

If the final y is preceded by a vowel, however, the rule does not apply.

• journeys
• obeying
• essays
• buys
• repaying
• attorneys

Rule 6

Use i before e except when the two letters follow c and have an e sound, or when they have an a sound as in neighbor and weigh.

• weird
• either
• seize
• foreign
• ancient
• forfeit
• height

Everyday Words that are Commonly Misspelled

If you find yourself over-relying on spell checkers or misspelling the same word for the seventeenth time this year, it would be to your advantage to improve your spelling. One shortcut to doing this is to consult this list of words that are frequently used and misspelled. Many smart writers even put a mark next to a word whenever they have to look it up, thereby helping themselves identify those words that give them the most trouble. To change a habitual spelling issue, you’ll have to commit the words you frequently misspell to memory, and physically looking them up until you do so is an effective method because it’s a way of taking action.