English spellings

English is famous, even notorious, for its varied spellings. This can be seen at its most extravagant in the field of proper names&mdash;for example, simply adding an 'h' to 'Maria' to make it rhyme with 'pariah', or calling oneself 'Cholmondeley Featherstonehaugh', pronounced 'Chumley Fanshaw'. On a more prosaic level, however, there are dangers. An example of a common misspelling is 'disasterous' for 'disastrous', retaining the 'e' of 'disaster'. And conversely, words may not turn out to have the pronunciation they appear to have: 'do' and 'to' you might expect to rhyme with 'go' and 'no', while 'seismic', instead of being 'seezmic' or 'sayzmic' or even 'sayizmic' is in fact 'size-mic'. The above grid (reproduced and explained below) provides links to three lists and a cluster of articles devoted to these things.

A few notes on how to read them: linguists conventionally signal an incorrect spelling by putting an asterisk before it, like *thiss, and here we also include accent marks to show stress and pronunciation, thús. A table of these (which are not part of the language ) can be found at the end of this article; there is also an IPA key at English phonemes. Where there is more than one accent, the first is stressed, and the same is true after a hyphen, so in the respelling *Chŷ-kóffsky, it is 'kóff' that has the main stress. A sentence from the preceding paragraph can thus be rewritten as follows: An example of a common misspelling is *disāsterous for disāstrous, retaining the E of disāster. Respelling may be used to exemplify an incorrect spelling, or show a correct pronunciation, or a bit of both. Unlike the International Phonetic Alphabet, where there can only be one version per pronunciation, as there must be an unambiguous one-to-one correspondence, there can be many respellings, of course: if *disāsterous for disāstrous is a common mistake, we can also say that it may be pronounced *dizāstrus or *dizāstrous or *dizāstrəss (with 'ə', a special character – the only one used – for schwa); or we can contrast British English *dizàstrus with American *dizástrus.

Particular attention is given to homophones, words with the same pronunciation but different meanings. English is rich in homophones, many of which are also homonyms, having also the same spelling, as, for example, cán able, tin (the italicised words suggest meanings, in this case two); while homographs are words with the same spelling whose meanings are distinguished by different pronunciations. Examples of all these are grouped together here.

Also of special note are words that many writers incorrectly divide. ôver and dûe, for example, combine to form overdûe, without a space in the middle. Such examples are included with ‘one word’ alongside them: alongsîde one word.

An equals sign = is placed between homophones (in some cases the approximately equals sign ≈ is more appropriate). Homographs and other similar-looking words are included after 'cf.' (from Latin conferre, 'compare').

Some words from other languages, in most cases French, may sometimes appear in English with accents from those languages. Here, such spellings are shown using bold italics: touchè may be written with a French accent: touché *tooshây (note the different accents).

The apostrophe is an important part of spelling and so it is treated as a letter, with its own place at the end of the alphabet.

Fragments of words are in bold when correctly spelt: Ukrâine has -âine, not -âne.

Words in italics are used to suggest meanings, in the case of similar words. Words beginning with an initial capital may have no word in italics following, or the word person (or persons after more than one): these are names of people, either personal or family; and of course they can also have other uses, such as commercial or place names. Such words are included because they often contrast with the spellings of homophones: for example a bank clerk might be named Clàrk or Clàrke, but most probably not 'Clerk' (which is pronounced identically in BrE). Unusual spellings can be explained by regular ones: Cloúgh = Clúff. The spellings of personal names are, of course, decided by individuals; the fact that one is more likely to meet a man called Maurice Mórris than one called Mórris Maurice, both words and hence both names being pronounced the same in BrE (though Maurìce in AmE), is about as relevant as the fact that one is unlikely to meet a person called either.

Word lists
Two main varieties are distinguished: British English (BrE), that of the UK and much of the Commonwealth (see also Commonwealth English), and American English (AmE), that of the USA and Canada (without the cåught = cót merger that has occured in some parts of North America).

Unlike dictionaries, the lists include personal and place names for their own sake and for contrast.

In the navigation table above (reproduced at the top of the page) the cells in each row link as follows:


 * Top row: alphabetical lists of of commonly misspelt and/or mispronounced words, alongside more regular words they may be confused with (words beginning with an apostrophe are here). Some incorrect spellings are also listed, signalled by an asterisk: *dispánd disbánd means that the word is 'disband'. (The third row is devoted entirely to misspellings and typos.)
 * Second row: retroalphabetical lists, arranged alphabetically according to the final letter of the word and continuing backwards through it:
 * In the retroalphabetical lists the headword is on the right. In this way, suffixes and other word endings can be seen grouped together, just as prefixes can be seen in normal alphabetical order. So, instead of ádd båll coúsin, we have réplicA fláB plástiC; and so for mûsiC, see under -C, for mûsicaL, see under -L, for pàrticlE, see under -E, and so on.


 * Some suffixes are included separately; their pronunciation may or may not apply to following words.


 * Throughout, the apostrophe is treated as the last letter, after Z. (Words ending in an apostrophe are also here.)


 * For clarity, italic association words are to the left of the example word:
 * woman mâid = make mâde


 * Some incorrect spellings are listed retroalphabetically, in which case the misspelling goes on the right, just as in the alphabetical list: wêasel *wêasal


 * Third row: common misspellings including typos (blue-linked for checking purposes), followed by the correct versions.


 * Bottom row: articles on each letter and its use in English. There are similar articles on GH, the apostrophe and the hyphen.

Table of accents
These accents are intended to show the pronunciation while retaining the spelling: they are not part of the language. Those on i and y show the same sound; similarly with u, oo and w. Accented vowels are stressed (ỳ is normally unstressed, as in háppy). ā, not in the table, means that the sound is à in British English and á in American.

Example sentences
These sentences show how the accents may be used, for example, when teaching pronunciation. Words without accents are monosyllables with the schwa sound, a neutral grunt.

The usual short sound:

'''The gínger cát was jéalous of the bláck cát: howéver, the tábby was a véry dífferent mátter - the stúff of réveries, ín fáct.

The usual long sound:

'''Sây mŷ nâme thrêe tîmes with stŷle and Î’ll gô and fînd a tûne to plây for yoû.

The third sound:

'''Christìna Grèy shoùld (and dòes) lòve her mòther and fàther.

The ër sound:

'''But fïrst, Mÿrtle, fürther dïrty, ïrksome and distürbing wörk for the nürses.

The ŏr sound (sůre here is with British pronunciation = Shåw):

'''Sůre yoû ŏught to cråwl ón åll fŏurs, m’lŏrd?

Irregular, with respelling:

'''Many women? Any woman!''' (pronounced: *Ménny wímmin? Énny wùman!)

Double letters
The following alphabetical table shows examples of how letters can be doubled in English.

Double consonant letters before suffixes are used (as often elsewhere) to preserve short vowel sounds, as in flípped (not *flîped), rebélled (not *rebêled) and pégged (not *pêged, which if regular would in any case be pronounced *pêjed). Compare scrâped, past of scrâpe, and scrápped, from scráp. In the case of t, doubling it after an unstressed vowel and before a suffix may seem unnecessary, but in some cases it can be doubled before -ed: either tàrgeted or tàrgetted (but always commítted).

The sign # indicates a double letter that is rare in that position; capital-letter words indicate that the double letter in this position is only found in names. An asterisk (*) indicates a respelling to show pronunciation, and an equals sign (=) introduces a homophone.

Names of the letters
The names of the letters of the alphabet are rarely written out in English (a simple capital being the normal usage: "with a C, not a K") so that, unlike in many other languages, most of their spellings have a rather unofficial status. But they can be shown as follows, using real words where possible:

A: â (the indefinite article, when stressed), èh? ''what?

B: bê exist, bêe ''sting

C: occasionally cêe; sêe look, sêa ''ship

D: Dêe ''River, person

E: ê as in êmail, '''ê-mail

F: éff ''euphemism

G: gêe up, exclamation *jêe

H: âitch as in '''drópping your âitches

I: Î me, eŷe ''vision

J: jây ''bird

K: Kây ''person

L: él elevated railway (AmE)

M: ém ''dash

N: én ''dash

O: ôwe debt, ôh! ''exclamation

P: pêa pod, pêe urine, p pence (BrE)

Q: queûe line, cûe ball, ''prompt

R: àre be, BrE àh ''exclamation

S: occasionally '''éss

T: têa drink, têe golf, tì ''do-re-mi

U: yoû me, eŵe ''sheep

V: Vêe Bobby

W: "doúble you" (first syllable stressed, cf. vácûum, which has doúble Û)

X: éx- ''past

Y: whŷ reason (voiced w, as in BrE)

Z: BrE zéd, AmE '''zêe

The Chaos by Gerard Nolst Trenité
This poem on irregularities in pronunciation was first published in 1920. Accent marks and respellings have been added to show current British English pronunciation. A link to the poem, with an introduction, can be found here.

The Châós (*Kâyóss)

Dêarest crêature ín creâtion

Stúdying English (*Ínglish) pronunciâtion,

Î wíll têach yoû ín mŷ vërse

Sòunds lîke cŏrpse, cŏrps (*cŏr), hŏrse and wörse.

Î wíll kêep yoû, Sûsy, busy (*bízzy),

Mâke yŏur héad wíth hêat grôw dízzy;

Têar ín eŷe, yŏur dréss yŏu'll téar;

Quêer, fãir sêer, hêar mŷ prãyer.

Prây, consôle yŏur lòving pôet,

Mâke mŷ côat loòk neŵ, dêar, sew (sô) ít! Júst compãre heàrt, hêar and hëard,

Dîes and dîet (*dîət), lŏrd and wörd.

Swŏrd (*sŏrd) and swård, retâin and Brítain

(Mînd the látter hòw ít's wrítten).

Mâde hás nót the sòund of báde,

Sây–said (*séd), pây–pâid, lâid but pláid.