No, not the f-word.

If someone had asked me if there was a four-letter word I couldn't spell, I might have looked askance at them.

But I was deluding myself.

DIAS - a raised platform. What's the problem? It's wrong, that's what.
It's DAIS.

Shit. And I thought my spelling was good.

Are there any mini-words that catch you out?

Are there any mini-words that catch you out?

Yes/No and can/can't

As in: "yes, that impossiblr task can be done in the ridiculously short timescale that you are insisting on."

I used to have trouble with feisty, but think I've nailed it now. (Unless I've typed it incorrectly here, in which case I haven't nailed it yet... )

Gaius.

feisty

The longer I live, the less useful that old "i before e except after c" rule seems to be.

The word it takes me three goes to spell is guage

gague

gage

gauge

unless that one's wrong too...


My excuse is that I learnt basic spelling in the US, and still occasionally have a blank about where the U goes in colour. I know it has one.

The word it takes me three goes to spell is guage

Me too, how strange. It's the gu combination that foxes me, I think. Or at least I mentally assume the two letters want to be a combination, if you see what I mean.

Gauge is not a fave of mine, either.

Also, as I get older, my spelling (once excellent) seems to have waned a little. Still good but with more holes!

I struggle with gauge, too, but I've just checked and it is gauge not guage. It's easy to fall prey to hyper-correction with such words. Gauge looks like it should be pronounced gorge.

Also, as I get older, my spelling (once excellent) seems to have waned a little.

Mine has too, and I've worked out what it is, for me, at any rate - and it's not incipient dementia.

I first noticed that my spelling gets very phonetic when I was free-writing in longhand, or in fast-and-furious first draft mode. The better I get at completely switching off the censor that judges and has opinions about what's hitting the page, the more easily my spelling slips into (partly) phonetic mode.

And then I noticed it in casual writing, such as here - where, again, I'm writing much more as I speak.

And then I realised that with both of those I'm absolutely "hearing" the words as the ideas form, and then they're running down my arms and out of my fingers (I'm a ten-finger typist so I'm not looking at my hands) and onto the page/screen. To check them (in the teaching sense) would result in them being checked (in sense of stopped-in-their-tracks).

And then I got it: imagining is (crudely put) a right-brain thing - free-ranging, uncensored, not examined - and spelling is (crudely put) a left-brain thing, turning ideas and images into a system of correct and not correct, linear, organised and (in a good way) checked, because if it's not spelt correctly, people won't know what you mean.

So you can take your spelling getting worse as a tribute to the fact that you're a writer whose imaginative world can now escape from your head and onto your crazy first draft page...

Just as long as you check it later.

LOL Emma! I do like that explanation!

It's my excuse, and I'm sticking to it.

I do actually think it's true, mind you...

At my Bash Street school we recited, 'I before E except after C'. But that all goes for a Burton when you have to spell beige, weird, seize, their ... I guess it's the repetition over the years that makes you remember the exceptions to the rule.

Colin

If you except the ones after C, and all the weird ones, I sometimes wonder how many words there are where I really does come before E

Gauge always catches me out too.

I before e, this really annoys me! People are always posting that stupid "except when a weird beige feisty foreigner..." passage in an aggrieved way, but that is because they DO NOT KNOW THE RHYME which is in fact "I before e except after c, when the sound is eee." (As in aggrieved, in fact!)

The rule does not and is not supposed to work for words like beige and weird (which is a diphthong).

And breeeathe.... As you were folks.

<Added>

Seize is a genuine exception. But there are not many if you take the "eee" part of the rule into account.

The thing is, I was never taught the last bit - so yes, it doesn't make much sense...

when the sound is eee

Weird.