Wednesday, March 11, 2009
I Before E right?
K, So when I start typing a paper I have this horrible problem. Well, It's a problem because it is an exception to the rule of the I before E rule. When I go to type about someone and a possion belonging to them I type this: "They brought thier tent with them on the camping trip." Looks right, right? Wrong it should be, "They brought their tent with them..." why? I thought I was supposed to come before E except after C, like this: Believe, achieve, receive, relieve. Well, this is not true. There are a lot of exceptions to this rule. almost as many that do follow the rule. Check out Wikipedia.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
i before e AFTER c, WHEN the sound is ee (as in meet). If you learnt the rule in primary school, then you need to know that, amazingly (or not, since we are not taught the grammar of our own language), primary teachers (and teachers of English in general) don't have to acquire any formal knowledge of their principal subject, unlike French teachers of French and so on.
ReplyDeleteThe EE sound and the C are important but don't expect there to be NO exceptions: two you might think of are protein and caffeine: -ein and -(e)ine refer to their chemical classifications.
Plurals of words like fancy-fancies are not thought of as exceptions, as you wouldn't expect anyone not to follow the rule that vowel+y=>ys monkey/s,while consonant+y=>ies.
Ooooh, I've just noticed I left out EXCEPT:
ReplyDeletei before e EXCEPT after c. I imagine you realised, but thought I should correct myself and say SORRY.