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I Before E Except After C
By nikkita | June 21, 2009
Uh oh. It’s time to forget everything you know. The British Government wants nothing more to do with the “I before E” rule.
Advice sent to teachers says there are too few words which follow the rule and recommends using more modern methods to teach spelling to schoolchildren.
The document, entitled Support for Spelling, is being distributed to more than 13,000 primary schools.
But some people believe the phrase should be retained because it is easy to remember and is broadly accurate.
…The guidance is being issued as part of the National Primary Strategy for under-11s.
It says: “The i before e rule is not worth teaching. It applies only to words in which the ie or ei stands for a clear ee sound. Unless this is known, words such as sufficient and veil look like exceptions.
“There are so few words where the ei spelling for the ee sounds follows the letter c that it is easier to learn the specific words.” These include receive, ceiling, perceive and deceit.
The document recommends other ways to teach pupils spelling, like studying television listings for compound words, changing the tense of a poem to practise irregular verbs and learning about homophones through jokes such as “How many socks in a pair? None — because you eat a pear.”
By the way, this is my favorite sentence:
Judy Parkinson, author of the best-selling book I Before E (Except After C), told the Daily Telegraph it was a phrase that struck a chord.
Best selling novel? Wow, this is even more of a riveting topic than I was lead on to believe. Seriously though, did the British government just wake up one day and say “you know what? ‘I before E’ is dead to me”? Because that’s kind of awesome. And sad. But more importantly, awesome.
Read more about the English language (which I frequently butcher) being silly here.
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