Faculty of Humanities and Social Science > English

Some rules of spelling: Rule 2

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Shampa Iftakhar:
Rule 2:  When adding suffixes that begin with a vowel (-able, -ible, -ous, etc.) to words ending in silent e, drop the final e.

    This rule explains why a word like desire contains an e and a word like desirable does not. Other examples include 

    response → responsible, continue → continuous, argue → arguing.

    We do, however, retain the final e when a word ends in -ce or -ge in order to maintain the distinctive "soft"   
     pronunciation of those consonants:

    notice → noticeable, courage → courageous, advantage → advantageous.

    For reasons of pronunciation, the final e is also retained in words ending in a double e,

    e.g. agree → agreeable, flee → fleeing.


Source:www.writing.utoronto.ca/advice/style-and-editing/spelling‎

nirvana:
Shampa Madam

Nice post but sadly our students find the rules of grammar hard enough to remember or understand. How they would react to rules of spelling is worth a thought.

Shampa Iftakhar:
Sir:

Never guide them to remember. Definitely, it's difficult to memorize. But if we mark their misspelled word, and remind them what should be actual spelling, I think they will be careful. 

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