For those who have always struggled to remember the exceptions to the “i” before “e” spelling rule: don’t bother.

One university lecturer has become so fed up with correcting his students’ atrocious spelling that he has launched a crusade for the most common “variant spellings” - otherwise known as spelling mistakes - to be fully accepted into common usage.

Instead of complaining about the state of education as he corrects the same spelling mistakes in undergraduate essays year after year, Ken Smith, a criminologist at Bucks New University, has a much simpler solution.

“Either we go on beating ourselves and our students up over this problem, or we simply give everyone a break and accept these variant spellings as such,” he suggests today in an article in The Times Higher Education Supplement.

Seeing that the spelling of the word “judgement”, for example, is now widely accepted as a variant of “judgment”, why can’t “truely” also be accepted as a variant spelling of “truly”? Dr Smith asks. “I am not asking [people] to learn to spell these words differently. All I am suggesting is that we might well put 20 or so of the most commonly misspelt words in the English language on the same footing as those other words that have a widely accepted variant spelling.”

As a starting point he suggests the ten words most commonly misspelt by his students (see panel). To these he would also add the word “misspelt” itself and all those that break the “i” before “e” rule (weird, seize, leisure, neighbour, foreign).

Dr Smith’s suggestion was warmly welcomed yesterday by Jack Bovill, chairman of the Spelling Society, which has advocated a simplified, more phonetic, approach to spelling since 1908.

Given that English often spells identical sounds in several ways, it is little wonder that English-speaking adults always come near the bottom in international studies on literacy, he says.

The ee-sound, for example can be spelt as in: seem, team, convene, sardine, protein, fiend, people, he, key, ski, debris and quay. Yet there are no rules for deciding when to use which, so why not just spell the ee-sound simply as “ee”? To ease the switch from current spelling to a more phonetic system, the Spelling Society advocates a period of transition in which traditional and new forms are used together.

Others are less keen. John Simpson, the chief editor of the Oxford English Dictionary, believes that Dr Smith is fighting a losing battle.

“There are enormous advantages in having a coherent system of spelling. It makes it easier to communicate. Maybe during a learning phase there is some scope for error, but I would hope that by the time people get to university they have learnt to spell,” he said.

He accepts, however, that some spellings do change over time. “Fifty years ago ‘alright’ was one word and now it is two,” he said.

As spelt by Dr Smith

Arguement for argument

Why drop the “e” in argument (and judgment) but not management?

Ignor for ignore

Ignore comes from the Latin ignorare, meaning “to know”, and ignarus, meaning “ignorant”. Neither of these words has an “e” after the “r”, so why do we?

Occured for occurred

There is no second “r” in the words “occur” or “occurs” and that is why nearly everyone misspells this word

Opertunity for opportunity

In Latin this word refers to the timely arrival at a harbour - Latin portus. But the Latin spelling is obportus, not opportus, so, if we were being consistent, we should spell “opportunity” as “obportunity”

Que for queue, or better yet cue or even kew

Where did we get the second “ue” in the word “queue” and why do we need it?

Speach for speech

We spell “speak” with an “ea”. We do not have to but we do. Since we do, let us then spell “speech” with an “a” too

Thier for their

(or better still, why not just drop the word their altogether in favour of there?) It does not make any difference to the meaning of a sentence if you spell “their” as “thier” or “there”, so why insist on “their”?

Truely for truly

We don’t spell the adverb “surely” as “surly” because this would make another word, so why is the adverb of “true” spelt “truly”?

Twelth as twelfth

Twelf is related to the Frisian tweli, but why should we care? You would not dream of spelling “stealth” or “wealth” with an “f” so why do it in “twelfth”?

Source: The Times Higher Education Supplement

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