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, as, 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'. Below are links to two lists 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.

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; 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 appear in English with accents from those languages. Such spellings are shown using bold italics: touchè may be written with a French accent: touché *tooshây.

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). Personal names are, of course, a matter for individuals, and 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.

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

	A	B	C	D	E	F	G	H	I	J	K	L	M	N	O	P	Q	R	S	T	U	V	W	X	Y	Z
Use in English
Alphabetical word list
Retroalphabetical list
Common misspellings

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In the navigation table above the cells in each row link as follows:

• Top row: alphabetical lists of of commonly misspelt and/or mispronounced words, alongside some regular ones for contrast (words beginning with an apostrophe are here). *Middle 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 with their pronunciation applying or not to following words.

Throughout, the apostrophe is treated as the last letter, after z.

For clarity, italic association words are to the left of the example word:

woman mâid = make mâde

• Bottom row: articles on each letter and its use in English (see also GH, apostrophe, hyphen)

Double letters

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

Double letters before suffixes are used to preserve short vowel sounds as in flípped (not *flîped), rebélled (not *rebêled) and pégged (not *pêged, which would if regular 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.

letter	initial	medial	final	final + silent e
a	àardvark #	Transvàal #	bàa #
b		ríbbon	ébb #	Crábbe
c		sóccer (*sócker), accépt (*əxépt)
d		hídden	ádd
e	êel	bêen	sêe
f		éffort	clíff	Clíffe
g		aggréssion	égg #	Légge (= lég)
h		hítchhike # (accidental)
i		skìíng #	Hawàìi #
j			hàjj # (also spelt hàdj)
k		púkka #
l	llàma #	fílling	wéll	bélle
m		súmmer	Crámm	grámme
n		dínner	ínn # pub	Ánne (= Ánn)
o	oôze, oòmph #	foôd, foòt, flòod, BrE doŏr	toô	Loôe (= loô)
p		flípped
q		Sadìqqi #
r		érror	pürr
s		méssy	lóss	crevásse
t		bétter	ẁatt	couchétte -sh-
u		vácuum # (*vákyoôm)
v		flívver #
w
x		Éxxon ™ #	Bób B. Sóxx #
y		Khayyàm #
z		fízzy	búzz

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.

	Front vowels			Back vowels
	e	i	y	a	o	u	oo	w
The typical short sound:	pét	pít	crýpt	cát	dóg	nút
The typical long sound, corresponding to the names of the letters A, E, I, O and U:	sêe	nîce	mŷ	nâme	nôse	tûne	toô	neŵ
The 'third' sound (ẁ- and qù- indicate the ó sound of the following a, ẁad rhyming with qùad; òu and òw are diphthongs sounding like àù in àùtobahn: nòw has this sòund):	èight	machìne	quaỳ water = keỳ (kêy) lock	àre	òther	fùll, qùantity	foòt	ẁant
The ër sound, as in ër, Î dôn’t thínk sô:	përson	bïrd	mÿrtle		wörd	pürr
The ŏr sound, as in thís ŏr thát (also used for cŏin and jŏy):				såw	mŏre	(for some BrE speakers) sůre
The ãir sound, as in frésh ãir:	(thére)			stãre
Irregular (with respelling):	sęw (ô)	merįngue (á)		becąuse (ó)	wǫman (ù)	bųsiness (í)

Example sentences

Words without accents have 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 lòve her mòther and fàther (and dòes).

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!)

See also

• Apostrophe
• Hyphen
• English phonemes
• Spelling pronunciation
• Letter (alphabet)
• Alphabet
• Writing system
• Orthography
• Written language
• Writing