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4.

Mnemonics for spelling

February

Anybody who's read Matilda by Roald Dahl should be able to spell 'difficulty' without difficulty:

Mrs. D, Mrs. I, Mrs. FFI, Mrs. CULTY

Again, this is said in a very rhythmic way, which makes it easy to remember.

Three mnemonics for the 'necessary' problem:
One cup of Coffee and two lumps of Sugar.

One Coat and two Shoes.

One Collar and two Sleeves.

“All right” is all wrong unless it’s two words!
I'm mailing from across the ocean: Suriname. Since we are closely related to our CARIBBEAN neighbours, we often come across and use the word. Unfortunately, it's often misspelled. So I tell my students to think of 'BB met R', which in Suriname stands for bruine bonen met rijst: one of our local dishes.

'together' is to-get-her

'separate' There was a farmer named Sep and one day his wife saw a rat. She
yelled, "Sep! A rat--E!!!"

'parallel' has two L's in the middle because the L's are parallel
themselves. parallel

'gouache' all the vowels except "i" and no "s".

i before e except after c

or when sounding like a

as in neighbour or weigh.

Here’s a nonsensical sentence containing the most common exceptions to this classic rule:

Neither ancient foreign sheik seized the kaleidoscope’s weird counterfeit heights.

Argument or arguement?

I lost an 'e' in an argument

Remembering to spell "cemetery" with three e's:

She cried "eee!" as she passed the cemetery.

Friend or Freind?

A friend is true till the END.

To spell "rhythm":

Rhythm Has Your Two Hips Moving

To spell "necessary":

Never Eat Crisps, Eat Salad Sandwiches, And Remain Young!

To spell "arithmetic":

A Rat In Tom's House Might Eat Tom's Ice Cream

To spell "Mississippi":

Say to yourself "M I double S, I double S, I double P, I" (try it - it will make more sense than seeing it written down!).

‘bus in ess’ for business
Desert or dessert? One or Two S's? A desert has one, but a dessert has two because you always want two desserts!Strawberry Shortcake

Dessert has two s's in it ... like Strawberry Shortcake

The word "believe" has "lie" in it!

When you assume something you make an "ass" of "u" and "me."

Your principal is your PAL

principal / principle: The chief gal is the principal; she makes rules called principles.

An island is land surrounded by water

You write quite well

Conscience: science plus con-.

correspondence

You don't dance when you correspond, so you don't spell it correspondance.

Ecstasy
To sy (sigh) with ecstasy, or perhaps two s's for sex.

stationary, stationery

When it means standing still, the ending is ary, for the a in stand. When it means paper, the ending is ery for the e in envelope.

succeed, proceed, exceed

The only three words in the English language ending in -ceed. When you think of the three words in the order given here, the initial letters form the beginning of SPElling.

Hey, Miss, you’re well off!

This sentence gives the three possible double letters at the end of a word in English.

Long words ending with an -l, one –l, and short words ending with an -l, two of them (e.g. beautiful, hopeful, wonderful, careful, partial, ; full, shall, drill, call, doll)

The longest word is mostly British
The word easier to write (or the shorter word) is in most cases American (airplane/aeroplane), the longer British! -(rumor/rumour; focusing / focussing).

AU or OU?
How to remember the spelling of past tenses?

Baund or bound? Braught or brought? Caught or cought? Faught or fought? Faund or found?

Graund or ground? Taught or tought? Thaught or thought? Waund or wound?

Easy to remember:

If there is an A in the infinitive, the past tense is AU. [A → AU]

So CATCH has CAUGHT, TEACH has TAUGHT.

If there is no A in the infinitive, the past tense is OU. [A → OU]

So BIND has BOUND, BRING has BROUGHT, FIGHT has FOUGHT,
FIND has FOUND, GRIND has GROUND, THINK has THOUGHT, WIND has WOUND.

Thanks to J. Luiten

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