I love grammar. (This is surprising to exactly no one at this point, right?) But we're taking a timeout from grammar this week to talk about spelling. The topic: when “i” comes before “e”. It seems like that's the most common trip-up in the English language today. You know why? Because there is no consistency.
But What About “I” Before “E” Except After “C”?
Sure, as a general rule, that's a great phrase to remember. Most of the time, it's true. See the example below:
Naomi believed that giant spiders were going to descend from the ceiling in her room at any moment, so she kept a broom by her bedside at all times.
And its cousin, “…or when sounded as ‘A' as in ‘neighbor' and ‘weigh',” can also be helpful. However, this is not even remotely a hard-and-fast rule. Let's continue Naomi's story:
She had to forfeit the broom, though, when her mother started noticing a weird thumping noise that was foreign to the normal household noises.
Further proof that the English language makes no sense. Comedian Brian Regan sums it up best in this clip. I wish there was a nice, neat, tidy rule for this one. Practice makes perfect though, and the more you use those weird e-before-i words, the more naturally you'll be able to spell them.
PRACTICE
Take a quick five minutes and come up with a list of i-before-e and e-before-i words. For the remaining ten minutes of practice time, use as many of those words as you can to describe a threat to a city/house/treehouse. It could be an impending missile, or giant spiders attacking. Post your practice in the comments and leave notes for your fellow writers.
I constantly forget the wording to the ‘when sounded as A’ rule, I haven’t heard it in years!
I would have to tattoo all of these words on my arm without spell check.
…
Keith the fierce collie fought the foerigheners as they infringed on his territory. Their ears seemed impervious to his barks, so thunderous they could be noted on a seismograph. The collie’s eight tiny heirs played obliviously with a skein of beige yarn. From his surveillance point he could see the weird creatures queuing up to seize his throne. Keith couldn’t feign his usual aloofness. He was outraged. He would never forfeit his reign. At this point Keith’s owner, with large quantities of caffeine flowing through her veins, could take it no longer. She poked the twitching, quivering animal with her toe ending the epic, albeit short, dream.
That’s cute!
I love the inevitable assonance of this post.
Katie
“The collie’s eight tiny heirs . . . yarn” – I get tongue twisted just trying to read it. Well done.
The blight in the neighborhood in which we had grown up was unbelievable! Houses once occupied by neighbors we knew and spoke to every day stood vacant, porches and roof sagging. And then the meth cookers moved in — you could walk down a certain block and smell the chemicals burning. You would never allow a child of yours to play in an environment such as this, which was so sad when we remembered the touch football games and pick-up softball games played out in these very yards in our youth, an irretrievable age ago. Once a thriving middle-calss community, this neighborhood had silpped more than one tier to the status of inner city, a place from which more well-heeled families fled, weighing the older sections of town in the balance and finding them wanting.
Interesting portrait of a neighborhood. Good imagery. A couple of the sentences were a tiny bit long. Maybe a few specific details about that “certian block”? I want to know what happens next.
Thank you for your comments, rainybrook. I do tend toward too-long sentences, gotta watch that, break the thoughts up into more easily digestible segments. I may just pursue this little avenue. Thanks for the encouragement.
I like the way you show how the neighborhood changed by comparing it to softball games and football. I grew up in a neighborhood like that. I hate to think what its become.
Thank you sir. I still live in the same town, within five miles of the house in which I grew up. I can still drive down that street and see those same houses, the Hullum’s lived there, the Stovall’s in that old scary two-story Victorian that I always imagined was haunted . . . it is so evocative, and yes, sad in a way, to realize how much our society has changed, grown more impersonal and alienated.
Vey well done especially with the handicap of using certain words. I love the phrase “an irretrievable age ago”.
Thank you very much! I almost think I didn’t use enough -ie- and -ei- words, but the story grabbed me and carried me away!
I think when stories take on a life of their own, when they kind of lead your pen, that’s when they are the best.
Agree 100%!
The foreign object hung over the neighborhood making a weird noise. There was no one who had experienced anything like it before.
Seizing the initiative, Joe decided that he would go out into the field and try to unravel the mystery. But once he arrived outside of town he had no idea what to do. He didn’t want to deceive the townspeople so he jumped on the farmers diesel tractor, leaving a receipt for it attached to a stalk of corn.
The vehicle wasn’t very efficient so he parked it next to a barn and used his cell phone to call a scientist.
Because his cell phone was ancient, it took more than ten minutes for the scientist to return his call so, I’m sorry to say, the story must end here.
I hope this story is well received.
Haha! Nice wordsmithing.
Thank you, rainybrook.
haha, what fun!! Very impressed at how many ie and ei words you got there. My favourite part was the receipt ‘attached to a stalk of corn’!!!
Thanks, Zo-zo. Where else would you leave a receipt in a field?
I had to laugh, that was pretty good indeed! Very creative.
How on earth do you think of things like that Angelo. You can get a plot out of thin air. Now I want to know what happened.
The treehouse was never going to be a wonder of science – it was just pieces of wood shoved together by eager hands. Neither mom nor the neighbours had faith in it’s progress. It’s very being filled them with a shaking fear and fury. Mom’s veins in her neck popped when she saw the kids playing on the creaking branches.
‘Either it’s me or the treehouse,’ she said.
Ed didn’t seem moved to keep her, so she helped him make the right decision. She stumbled furiously towards the tree, axe in hand.
It fell down in three blows, just time for her to take the cupcakes out the oven.
There was never another treehouse.
This is funny. I like her felling the tree just in time to take the cupcakes out of the oven. It kind of has a modern fairy tale ring to it.
I like how you so succinctly tied it up at the end. Such intense trepidation followed by the calm image of home sweet home – minus that treehouse!
i before e except after c. yep, got it!
It was like the nightmare again, just like I had seen it countless times before. Conceived by neither imagination nor perceived quite as reality, I reiterated to the ones standing around me to wake me up from the nightmare, I don’t want to see it again. But my mind was not deceiving me though I could not believe what I was really seeing, that such fiery wrath reigning down upon our country with fierce clarity was really happening. Such a fierce terror gripped me when I knew I was losing friends, which ones jumped from such a height and which ones stayed behind to burn, that part I would never know. I imagined the fire crawled across the ceiling, then poured down into the 92nd floor like water through a sieve because it just had nowhere else to go. It was my nightmare but I was suddenly living it, for nine years I saw it briefly behind the veil of sleeping eyes – but that day my eyes were wide open and the sight before me would not go away. What a grievous piece of reality between eight and nine in the morning! Only after hours and hours of checking and rechecking to see if the buildings were really gone, the shrieking of fighter jets flying over the broken the Manhattan skyline only yielded the horrible truth that we were a nation under siege. Sometimes the grief still pierces my heart and it has been over ten years now, even after nearly eleven years the memory still produces tiers of emotions. Sometimes I am fine and at other times I still burst into tears. Should I speak to a priest? Sometimes there is this guilt, I should have been there that day but someone else was there in my place, someone died because I said no to a job offer in the World Trade Center the summer of 2001.
Oh that line about friends is just heartbreaking… And the picture of fire ‘like water through a sieve’ is so clear. You’ve just shown me scenes I never saw before of 911… wow.
Thanks. This is the first I have been able to write about this since it happened. Its all my own experience except about the part about the fire, that imagery I got after speaking to a NYC firefighter. Normally I write fiction, but figured I’d take a shot at non fiction this time.
I found thee exercises very interesting.
I tell people, “I was an English major, not a spelling major. That’s why they invented spell check.” and I stand by that comment now 🙂