Member-only story
The ‘i before e except after c’ rule is Not What You Think
A commonly mis-used spelling guide
Introduction
When I was growing up, my absolute Achilles Heel was spelling. My mother panicked about this like mad and spent silly amounts of money on memory-jogging books and things to help me get the hang of it.
English is a mungral language. So many of its words are borrowed and/or corrupted from elsewhere. Consequently, there are few sensible conventions about usage and spelling that uniformly apply across the board. It's a miracle anybody can spell at all!
There are various different rules commonly taught to help people with this conundrum. Examples include ‘q is always followed by u’, because is ‘Big Elephants Can’t always Use Small Entrances’ or ‘your school principal is your pal’.
But there’s one in particular that’s very underappreciated, largely because of how much it is misunderstood.
I before e except after c
You almost certainly know the rule that says ‘i before e, except after c’. A rule that yields a ceiling on mistakes. But it’s less useful than you think. The BBC’s long-standing popular comedy/light entertainment programme QI discussed how rarely this actually applies, claiming that there are in fact 923…
