Spelling Rules
Five spelling rules are worth a child's time: the silent e, doubling the final consonant, adding -ed and -ing, plurals, and i before e — and only the first four can be trusted.
Every rule below is shown with the exceptions the classroom version leaves out.
The I Before E Rule
Year 5-6 / 4th-5th gradeI before E, except after C.
How far it holds: Poor. It only speaks to the ee sound, and even there it is broken by weird, seize, neither, protein and the whole -cient family. Treat it as a hint, not a rule.
The Silent E Rule
Year 1-2 / 1st gradeA silent e on the end of a word makes the vowel before it say its own name: hop becomes hope.
How far it holds: Good for one-syllable words with a single consonant in the middle, and that covers most of what a 5 to 7 year old reads. It fails on a dozen very common words, and they are words a child meets on day one.
Doubling the Final Consonant
Year 2-3 / 2nd gradeWhen a short word ends in one vowel plus one consonant, double the consonant before adding an ending that starts with a vowel: hop becomes hopping.
How far it holds: Strong for short words, which is where it is taught. For longer words it only holds when the stress is on the last syllable, and the version taught in class usually leaves that part out.
Adding -ed and -ing
Year 2-3 / 2nd gradeAdd -ed or -ing straight onto the word, unless it ends in a silent e (drop the e), or a consonant plus y (change y to i before -ed).
How far it holds: High. Three changes cover almost every regular verb. The real difficulty is not the rule but the irregular past tenses sitting alongside it, which the rule never touches.
Plural Rules
Year 3-5 / 2nd-4th gradeAdd -s to make a plural; add -es after s, x, z, ch and sh; a consonant plus y becomes -ies.
How far it holds: The -s, -es and -ies parts are close to watertight. The -f to -ves change is about half reliable, the words ending in o are a coin toss, and the irregulars follow no rule at all.
Why we say how far each rule holds
A child who has been told a rule always works does not check. The first time the rule fails — and with i before e, it fails on the word weird — the child either writes it wrong with confidence or decides that spelling is arbitrary and stops using rules at all. Both outcomes are worse than having been told the truth up front.
So each page here gives the rule as it is taught, then says plainly how often it fails, then gives the version that survives contact with real words. The exceptions are listed in full rather than hinted at, because a short list of exceptions is learnable and a vague warning is not.
No jargon without a plain-English gloss, either. A digraph is two letters making one sound; a schwa is the flat uh in the middle of separate. If a term needs explaining, it gets explained the first time it appears.
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Frequently asked
How many spelling rules are there in English?
Depending on who is counting, between five and about forty. The number is misleading: a handful of rules cover most of what a child writes, and the rest are patterns with so many exceptions that learning the words directly is faster. The five on this page are the ones that repay the effort.
Do English spelling rules actually work?
Some do, some barely. Adding -ed and -ing is close to watertight. The doubling rule is strong for short words. I before E, except after C is wrong often enough that a child following it faithfully will misspell weird, seize, neither, foreign and height. Every rule on this page states how far it can be trusted, because a rule taught as absolute does more damage than no rule at all.
Which spelling rule should I teach first?
The silent e, around 1st grade — it explains hop against hope, and it unlocks a large share of the words a beginning reader meets. Doubling and the -ed/-ing changes follow in 2nd grade, plurals across 2nd to 4th, and i before e around 4th or 5th, by which point a child is old enough to be told the rule is unreliable.
Why does English spelling have so many exceptions?
Because English kept the spellings of words it borrowed. Ballet is French, rhythm is Greek, knife is Old English with the k still spelled. The exceptions are not sloppiness, they are a record of where each word came from, which is also why the etymology often makes an odd spelling memorable.