1. Some students lack the ability of being able to spell.
2. He seems to enjoy the universal esteem of all men.
3. The mind rebels against the enforced discipline imposed upon it by others.
4. This is the house that was constructed and erected by a young fellow who went by the common name of Jack.
5. There are invariably people in the world who always want to get something for nothing. I saw some today crowding round a soap man who was giving away free samples gratis.
6. Strawberries which grow in the woods or anywhere like that have a flavor that is better than that of those which grow in gardens.
7. The people showed Jackson the greatest honor it is within their power to bestow by electing him president.
8. It was an old man of about sixty years, and he carried a cane to support himself with when he took a walk. He pulled out his watch to see what time it was every few minutes.
9. My favorite magazine is the one called Popular Mechanics. I like it because it appeals to me.
10. There is a bird, and that bird is the cuckoo, that seems to think it unnecessary to build its own nest, and so it occupies any nest that it happens to find.
11. It is a good plan to follow if one would like to be able to develop his memory to make it a rule to learn at least a few lines of poetry every night before going to bed.
12. In the annals of history there is no historical character more unselfish than the character of Robert E. Lee.
13. There are quite a few hotels in Estes Park, which is in Colorado, but the one that is the most picturesque and striking so that you remember it a long time on account of its unusual surroundings is Long's Peak Inn.
14. It is often, but not always, a good sign that when one person is quick to suspect another person of disloyalty or dishonesty that he himself is disloyal or dishonest.
15. The canine quadruped was under suspicion of having obliterated by a process of mastication that article of sustenance which the butcher deposits at our posterior portal.

B. The Exact Word

1. Ostrich eggs made into omelets are a funny experience.
2. A small back porch can be built which will enter directly into the kitchen.
3. Ruskin uses a great deal of unfamiliar words.
4. Reading will broaden the point of view of a student.
5. To visit the plant in operation is indeed a spectacular sight.
6. My plants grew and looked nicer than any I ever saw.
7. I place little truth in that article, since it appeared in a strong partisan paper.
8. The manufacturing of automobiles has gained to quite an extent.
9. Emerson has some real clever thoughts in his essays.
10. I do not mean to degrade our local street car system, for indeed, it is good along some lines.
11. I want to attain a greater per cent of efficiency in my study.
12. Imagination is an important part in the successful writing of themes.
13. His employer praised him for the preparation he had done.
14. I used water-wings as a sort of a "safety first" until I learned how to swim.
15. In order to prevent infection from disease, two big things are necessary.
16. The pastor delivered the announcements and after the collection had been obtained, he presented the sermon of the morning.
17. Another factor in my career that winter was that I became a part of the orchestra.
18. It was a mighty nice party that Mrs. Jones gave and everybody seemed to have an awfully nice time.
19. The more general word socialism might be divided into three distinct classes, namely: the political party, the theoretical socialist, and last what might be called a general tendency.
20. Starting with the pioneer days and up to the present time every energy was set forth to lay low the forests and to get homes from the wilderness.

C. Words Sometimes Confused in Meaning

1. The climate of California is very (healthful, healthy).
2. (Leave, let) me have the book.
3. He is afraid that he will (loose, lose) his position.
4. The (principal, principle) speaker of the day was Colonel Walker.
5. I cannot run (as, like) he can.
6. An hour ago he (laid, lay) down to sleep.
7. I fear we are (liable, likely) to be punished.
8. The scolding did not much (affect, effect) him.
9. The light roller presses down the bricks so that the steam roller will break (fewer, less) of them.
10. Whittier makes many (allusions, illusions) to the Bible.
11. Bread will (raise, rise) much more quickly in a warm place than in a place where there is a draft.
12. It hardly seems (credible, creditable) that a small child could walk ten miles.
13. I can't write a letter on this (stationary, stationery).
14. He (sets, sits) at the head of the table.
15. He spoke to the stranger (respectfully, respectively).
16. Did the president (affect, effect) a settlement of the strike?
17. I cannot (accept, except) help from anyone.
18. Are the guests (already, all ready) for dinner?
19. Is the train moving or (stationary, stationery)?
20. It is (apt, likely, liable) to be pleasant tomorrow.

D. Colloquialism, Slang, Faulty Idiom, etc.

1. I was kind of tired this morning, but now I feel alright.
2. I should of known better.
3. A young lady and myself went walking.
4. He is out of town for a couple days.
5. I feel some better now.
6. He will benefit greatly from the results.
7. The Puritans were a very odd acting people.
8. I like camping because of many reasons.
9. Cook your meal, and after you are finished eating, wash the dishes.
10. He is a regular genius of a bookkeeper.
11. It is hard to see how humans can live in such tenements.
12. The soldiers destroyed property without the least regard of who owned it.
13. She was crazy for an invite to the hop.
14. It was up to me to get out before there was something doing.
15. The Gettysburg Address is very simple of understanding though very strong of meaning.
16. When we become located in a desirable locality, we intend to pay off some of our social indebtedness.
17. Have some local glass dealer to mend the broken door, and send us the bill for the same.
18. The first part of Franklin's Autobiography is different than the latter part, which he wrote after the Revolutionary War.
19. In 1771 a fellow by the name of Arkwright established a mill in which spinning machines were run by water power.
20. Each day has brought closer to home the truth that the condition of mankind in one part of the world is certain to effect the equilibrium of mankind in most all other parts of the world.

SPELLING

Recording Errors

70. Keep a list of all the words you misspell, copying them several times in correct form. Concentrate your effort upon a few words at a time—upon those words which you yourself actually misspell. The list will be shorter than you think. It may comprise not more than twenty or thirty words. Unless you are extraordinarily deficient, it will certainly not comprise more than a hundred or a hundred and fifty. Find where your weakness lies; then master it. You can accomplish the difficult part of the task in a single afternoon. An occasional review, and constant care when you write, will make your mastery permanent.

After this, and only after this, begin slowly to learn the spelling of words which you do not yourself use often, but which are a desirable equipment for all educated men. See the list under 79. Concentrate your efforts upon a few words at a time. It is better to know a few exactly than a large number hazily. Form the mental habit of being always right with a small group of words, and extend this group gradually.

Exercise:

Prepare for your instructor a corrected list of words which you have misspelled in your papers to the present time.

Pronouncing Accurately

71. Avoid slovenly pronunciation. Careful articulation makes for correctness in spelling.

Watch the vowels of unaccented syllables; give them distinct (not exaggerated) utterance, at least until you are familiar with the spelling. Examples: separate, opportunity, everybody, sophomore, divine.

Sound accurately all the consonants between syllables, and do not sound a single consonant twice. Examples: candidate, government, surprise (not supprise), omission (compare occasion), defer (compare differ).

Sound the g in final -ing. Examples: eating, running.

Pronounce the -al of adverbs derived from adjectives in -ic or -al. Examples: tragically, occasionally, generally, ungrammatically.

Do not transpose letters; place each letter where it belongs. Examples: perspiration (not prespiration), tragedy (not tradegy).

Note.—The principle of phonetic spelling as stated above applies to many words, but by no means to all. The Simplified Spelling Board would extend this principle by changing the spelling of words to correspond with their actual sounds. It recommends such forms as tho, thru, enuf, quartet, catalog, program. If the student employs these forms, he must use them consistently. Many writers oppose simplified spelling; many advocate it; many compromise. Others desire to supplant our present alphabet with one more nearly phonetic, and prefer, until this fundamental reform takes place, to preserve our present spelling as it is.

Exercise:

Copy the following words slowly, pronouncing the syllables as you write: accidentally, accommodate, accurately, artistically, athletics (not atheletics), boundary, candidate, cavalry, commission, curiosity, defer, definite, description, despair, different, dining room, dinned, disappoint, divide, divine, emphatically, eighth, everybody, February, finally, goddess, government, hundred, hurrying, instinct, laboratory, library, lightning, might have (not might of), naturally, necessary, occasionally, omission, opinion, opportunity, optimist, partner, perform, perhaps, perspiration, prescription, primitive, privilege, probably, quantity, really, recognise, recommend, reverence, separate, should have (not should of), sophomore, strictly, superintendent, surprise, temperance, tragedy, usually, whether.

Logical Kinship in Words

72. Get help in spelling a difficult word by thinking of related words. To think of ridiculous will prevent your writing a for the second i of ridicule; to think of ridicule will prevent your writing rediculous. To think of prepare will prevent your writing preperation; to think of preparation will forestall preparitory. To think of busy will save you from the monstrosity buisness. To think of the prefixes re- (meaning again) and dis- (meaning not), and the verbs commend and appoint, will prevent your writing recommend or disappoint with a double c or s.

Note.—The relationship between words is not always a safe guide to spelling. Observe four, forty; nine, ninth; maintain, maintenance; please, pleasant; speak, speech; prevail, prevalent. Do not confuse the following prefixes, which have no logical connection:

Exercise:

1. Write the nouns corresponding to the following verbs: prepare, allude, govern, represent, degrade.
2. Write the adjectives corresponding to the following nouns and the nouns corresponding to the following adjectives: desperation, academy, origin, ridiculous, miraculous, grammatical, arithmetical, busy.
3. Write the adverbs corresponding to the following adjectives: real, sure, actual, hurried, accidental, incidental, grammatical.
4. Copy the following pairs of related words or related forms of words: labor, laboratory; debate, debater; base, based; deal, dealt; chose, chosen; mean, meant.
5. Write each of the following words with a hyphen between the prefix and the body of the word: describe, description, disappoint, disappear, disease, dissatisfy, dissever, permit, perspire, prescription, preconceive, recommend, recollect, reconsider, antedate, antecedent, anticlimax, antitoxin.

Superficial Resemblances between Words

73. Guard against misspelling a word because it bears a superficial resemblance, in sound or appearance, to some other word. Most of the words in the following list have no logical connection; the resemblance is one of form only (angel, angle). But a few words are included which are different in spelling in spite of a logical relation (breath, breathe).

Exercise:

1. Insert to, too, or two: He is —— tired —— walk the ——miles —— the town. Then ——, it is —— late —— catch a car. It is —— minutes of ——. It is —— bad.
2. Insert lose or loose: You will —— your money if you carry it —— in your pocket. We are ——ing time. The sailor ——ens the rope. Did you —— your ticket?
3. Insert speak or speech: I was ——ing with our congressman about his recent ——. I —— from experience.
4. Insert plan or plane: The architect's —— was accepted. The carpenter's —— cuts a long shaving. The carpenter does not —— the house.
5. Insert quite or quiet: The baby is ——ly sleeping. She is —— well now, but last night she was —— sick. Be ——. Walk ——ly when you go.

Words in ei or ie

74.

Examples: believe, grief, chief; but receive, deceive, ceiling.

Exceptions: Neither financier seized either species of weird leisure. (Also a few uncommon words, like seignior, inveigle, plebeian.)

Rules based on a key-word, lice, Alice, Celia (i follows l and e follows c) apply after two consonants only, and do not help one to spell a word like grief. Rule 74 applies after all consonants.

Note.—The words in which the sound is ee are the words really difficult to spell. When the sound is any other than ee (especially when it is a), i usually follows e.

Examples: veil, weigh, freight, neighbor, height, sleight, heir, heifer, counterfeit, foreign, etc.

Exceptions: ancient, friend, sieve, mischief, fiery, tries, etc.

Exercise:

Write the following words, supplying ei or ie: conc—t, retr—ve, dec—tful, n—ce, y—ld, p—ce, s—ge, s—ze, rec—pt, n—ther, w—rd, rel—ve, l—sure, f—ld, v—n, r—gn, sover—gn, sl—gh, br—f, dec—ve, r—n, f—nt, perc—ve, w—ld, gr—vous, —ther.

Doubling a Final Consonant

75. Monosyllables and words accented on the final syllable, if they end in one consonant preceded by a single vowel, double the consonant before a suffix beginning with a vowel.

Examples: (a) Words derived from monosyllables: plan-ned, clan-nish, get-ting, hot-test, bag-gage, (b) Words derived from words accented on the final syllable: begin-ning, repel-lent, unregret-ted.

Note 1.—There are four distinct steps in the application of this rule. (1) The primary word must be found. To decide whether begging contains two g's, we must first think of beg. (2) The primary word must be a monosyllable or a word accented on the final syllable. Hit and allot meet this test; open does not. Deferred and differed, preferred and proffered, committed (or committee) and prohibited double or refrain from doubling the final consonant of the primary word according to the position of the accent. The seeming discrepancy between preferred and preferable, between conferred and conference, is due to a shifting of the accent to the first syllable in the case of preferable and conference. (3) The primary word must end in one consonant. Trace, oppose, interfere, help, reach, and perform fail to meet this test, and therefore in derivatives do not double the last consonant. Assurance has one r, as it should have; occurrence has two r's, as it should have. (4) The final consonant of the primary word must be preceded by a single vowel. This principle excludes the extra consonant from needy, daubed, and proceeding, and gives it to running.

Note 2.—After q, u has the force of w. Hence quitting, quizzes, squatter, acquitted, equipped, and similar words are not really exceptions to the rule.

Exercise:

1. Write the present participle (in -ing) of din (not dine), begin, sin (compare shine), stop, prefer, rob, drop, occur, omit, swim, get, commit.
2. Write the past tense (in -ed) of plan (not plane), star (compare stare), stop (compare slope), lop (not lope), hop (not hope), fit, benefit, occur (compare cure), offer, confer, bat (compare abate).

Final e before a Suffix Beginning with a Vowel

76. Words that end in silent e usually drop the e in derivatives or before a suffix beginning with a vowel.

Examples: bride, bridal; guide, guidance; please, pleasure; fleece, fleecy; force, forcible; argue, arguing; arrive, arrival; conceive, conceivable; college, collegiate; write, writing; use, using; change, changing; judge, judging; believe, believing.

Note 1.—Of the exceptions some retain the e to prevent confusion with other words. Exceptions: dyeing, singeing, mileage, acreage, hoeing, shoeing, agreeing, eyeing. The exceptions cause comparatively little trouble. One rarely sees hoing or shoing; he often sees hopeing and inviteing.

Note 2.—After c or g and before a suffix beginning with a or o the e is retained. The purpose of this retention is to preserve the soft sound of the c or g. (Observe that c and g have the hard sound in cable, gable, cold, go.)

Examples: peaceable, changeable, noticeable, serviceable, outrageous, courageous, advantageous.

Exercise:

1. Write the present participle of the following words: use, love, change, judge, shake, hope, shine, have, seize, slope, strike, dine, come, place, argue, achieve, emerge, arrange, abide, oblige, subdue.
2. Write the present participle of the following words: singe, tinge, dye, agree, eye.
3. Write the -ous or -able form of the following words: trace, love, blame, move, conceive, courage, service, advantage, umbrage.
4. Write the adjectives which correspond to the following nouns: force, sphere, vice, sense, fleece, college, hygiene.
5. Write the nouns which correspond to the following verbs: please, guide, grieve, arrive, oblige, prepare, inspire.

Plurals

77a. Most nouns add s or es to form the plural. Examples: word, words; fire, fires, negro, negroes; Eskimo, Eskimos; leaf, leaves (f changes to v for the sake of euphony); knife, knives.

b. Nouns ending in y preceded by a consonant (or by u as w) change the y to i and add es to form the plural.

• Examples: sky, skies; lady, ladies; colloquy, colloquies; soliloquy, soliloquies.
• Other nouns ending in y form the plural in the usual way. Examples: day, days; boy, boys; monkey, monkeys; valley, valleys.

c. Compound nouns usually form the plural by adding s or es to the principal word. Examples: sons-in-law, passers-by; but stand-bys, hat-boxes, writing-desks.

d. Letters, signs, and sometimes figures, add 's to form the plural. Examples: Cross your t's and dot your i's; ?'s; $'s; 3's or 3s.

e. A few nouns adhere to old declensions. Examples: ox, oxen; child, children; goose, geese; foot, feet; mouse, mice; man, men; woman, women; sheep, sheep; deer, deer; swine, swine.

f. Words adopted from foreign languages sometimes retain the foreign plural. Examples: alumnus, alumni; alumna, alumnæ; fungus, fungi; focus, foci; radius, radii; datum, data; medium, media; phenomenon, phenomena; stratum, strata; analysis, analyses; antithesis, antitheses; basis, bases; crisis, crises; oasis, oases; hypothesis, hypotheses; parenthesis, parentheses; thesis, theses; beau, beaux; tableau, tableaux; Mr., Messrs. (Messieurs); Mrs., Mmes. (Mesdames).

Exercise:

Write the singular and plural of the following words: day, sky, lady, wife, leaf, loaf, negro, potato, tomato, pass, glass, boat, beet, flash, crash, bead, box, passenger, messenger, son-in-law, Smith, Jones, jack-o'-lantern, hanger-on, stratum, datum, phenomenon, crisis, basis, thesis, analysis.

Compounds

78a. Use a hyphen between two or more words which serve as a single adjective before a noun: iron-bound bucket, well-kept lawn, twelve-inch main, normal-school teacher, up-to-date methods, twentieth-century ideas, devil-may-care expression, a twenty-dollar-a-week clerk.

But when the words follow the noun, the hyphen is omitted. The lawn is well kept. Methods up to date in every way.

Also adverbs ending in -ly are not ordinarily made into compound modifiers: nicely kept lawn, securely guarded treasure.

b. Use a hyphen between members of a compound noun when the second member is a preposition, or when the writing of two nouns solid or separately might confuse the meaning: runner-up, kick-off; letting-down of effort, son-in-law, jack-o'-lantern, Pedro was a bull-fighter, a woman-hater, Did you ever see a shoe-polish like this?

c. Use a hyphen in compound numbers from twenty-one to ninety-nine, and in fractions according to the following examples:

Twenty-three, eighty-nine; but one hundred and one. Twenty-third, one-hundred-and-first man. Three-fourths, four and two-thirds, thirty-hundredths, thirty-one hundredths.

But omit the hyphen in simple fractions when loosely used: Three quarters of my life are spent. One third of his fortune.

d. A hyphen is not used in the following common words: airship, altogether, anybody, baseball, basketball, everybody, football, goodby, herself, handbook, himself, inasmuch, itself, midnight, myself, nevertheless, nobody, nothing (but no one), nowadays, railroad, themselves, together, typewritten, wherever, without, workshop, yourself, newspaper, sunset.

e. For words that do not come within the scope of rules, consult an up-to-date dictionary. Compounds tend, with the passing of time, to grow together. Once men wrote steam boat, later steam-boat, and finally steamboat. New-coined words are usually hyphenated; old words are often written solid. The degree of intimacy between the parts of a compound word affects usage; thus we write sun-motor, but sunbeam; birth-rate, but birthday; cooling-room, but bedroom; non-conductor, but nonsense. The ease with which a vowel blends with the consonant of a syllable adjoining it affects usage; thus self-evident, but selfsame; non-existent, but nondescript; un-American, but unwise. Many compounds, however, are still uncontrolled by usage; whether they should be written as two words or one, whether with or without the hyphen, the dictionaries themselves do not agree.

Exercise:

Copy the following expressions, inserting hyphens where they are necessary: twenty two years old, twenty two dollar bills make forty dollars, twenty seven eighths inch boards, a normal school graduate, two handled boxes, a cloth covered basket, blood red sun, water tight compartment, sixty horse power motor, seven dollar bathing suits, a happy go lucky fellow, germ destroying powder, he had a son in law, passers by on the street, the kick off is at three o'clock, dark complexioned woman, silver tongued orator, a dish like valley, a rope like tail, a fish shaped cloud, a touch me not expression, will o' the wisp, well to do merchant, rough and tumble existence.

79. SPELLING LIST

Note 1.—The following words have more than one correct form, the one given here being preferred.