Spelling Rules

Anyone who has ever had to memorize a tough-to-spell English word (It’s fuchsia, right? Or is it fuschia? Fushia?) has noticed that the spelling of some words is wildly different from the way we pronounce them. To make matters worse, some words are spelled differently in American English and British English. If it makes you feel any better, the eccentricities of English spelling weren’t invented just to make life difficult for writers.

Around Shakespeare’s time, when spelling was first becoming standardized, the spelling of most English words was mostly phonetic—or at least more phonetic than it is today. For example, English speakers did once pronounce the k at the beginning of words like knife and knee. But even though no one has pronounced knee as “kuh-nee” in centuries, we still hang on to the old spelling.

Fortunately, there are a few rules of thumb that can help when you’re faced with a word you’re not sure how to spell.

Spelling Rule 1: I Before E, Except After C

The rule goes like this:

I before E, Except after C, unless it sounds like A, as in neighbor or weigh

There are many exceptions to this rule—maybe it’s better to think of it as a guideline—but it can be helpful with words like the ones below.

I before E

Would you like a piece of cake? Jerry will believe anything. They’re planting new grass on the football field.

Except before C

Darnell received an A on his spelling test. Jeremy spotted a spider on the ceiling. I never expected such deceit from you!

Unless it sounds like A

Our neighbors live in a beige house. How much does the kitten weigh?

Here’s a tip: It’s a good idea to memorize these common exceptions to the rule:

seize, either, weird, height, foreign, leisure, conscience, counterfeit, forfeit, neither, science, species, sufficient

Spelling Rule 2: Adding Suffixes to Words that End in Y

When you add a suffix that starts with E (such as -ed, -er, or -est) to a word that ends in Y, the Y usually changes to an I.

• Cry – cried – crier
• Dry – dried – drier
• Lay – laid (note the irregular spelling: no E)
• Baby – babies
• Family – families
• Ugly – ugliest

This is the dustiest old house I’ve ever seen. The best bakers make the flakiest pie crusts. The soup needs the tiniest pinch of salt, and then it’s perfect. Seawater dries out your skin.

The Y doesn’t change for the suffix -ing.

The baby has been crying for almost an hour. The minute we brought in the new puppy, our mother began laying down sheets of newspaper. We should spend some time tidying before the guests arrive.

If the word in question has two consonants before the Y, change the Y to I before adding the suffix ‑ly.

• Sloppy – sloppily
• Happy – happily
• Scary – scarily

Funnily enough, I said the same thing just yesterday.

Of course, there are always exceptions:

“Funny,” he said dryly.

Spelling Rule 3: The Silent E

Typically, an E after a consonant at the end of a word is silent, but it does affect the way you pronounce the vowel that comes before the consonant. The E makes the vowel sound of the word (or syllable) long (like the I sound in kite) instead of short (like the I sound in kitten). It’s important to get the silent E right, because its presence or absence can change the meaning of a word.

The monkey bit me. Keep your fingers out of the cage: the monkeys bite.
By adding the E to the end of bit, the word is changed from past to present tense.
Don’t cut yourself on the sharp knives. The kitten is really cute.
In this case, the silent E creates a completely different word.

When adding a suffix like -ed, -er or -est, the silent E is usually dropped from the end of the root word.

The dog bared his teeth at the mail carrier. The baby’s eyes were the bluest I’d ever seen.

Spelling Rule 4: Double Consonants

Watch out for double consonants. It can be difficult to hear them when a word is said aloud—especially if the word has only one syllable. Double consonants are frequently found in words that have suffixes added to them:

I dropped the heavy bags to the floor. Someone called for you earlier.

Some words can be pronounced as either one or two syllables, but the spelling remains the same:

Blessed are the meek for they shall inherit the Earth.
In this sentence, which is a fixed expression, blessed is pronounced as two syllables: bless-ed.
The father blessed his son before the wedding.
In this sentence, blessed is pronounced as one syllable: blest.

Be particularly careful with words where a double consonant can change the pronunciation and the meaning of the word.

Cacti are native to the desert. Would you like ice cream for dessert?

Spelling Rule 5: Plural Suffixes

When do you add ‑s and when do you add ‑es to make a plural? It’s not quite as arbitrary as it may seem. The rule is this: if a word ends in ‑s, ‑sh, ‑ch, ‑x, or ‑z, you add ‑es.

I only had to take one bus; you had to take two buses. I only get one wish; you get two wishes. I have a splotch on my shirt; you have two splotches. I’m carrying one box; you’re carrying two boxes. Would you like a spritz of perfume? Two spritzes, please.

For all other endings, add ‑s.

I have one cat; you have two cats. I have one cup; you have two cups. I have one shoe; you have two shoes. Where is my other shoe? I have one ski; you have two skis. How am I supposed to ski? I have one toque; you have two toques.

Be careful of words that don’t change when they’re pluralized (e.g., fish, sheep, moose). If you’re unsure, check the dictionary.

Be sure to also check out this list of commonly confused words to help you choose the right spelling of words with similar meanings and pronunciations.

Can You Actually Use Emojis in Work Emails?

Chances are you encounter emojis on a daily basis. These adorable icons are popping up everywhere—in texts with friends and family, social media posts, and even in the movie theater.

But are they in your work emails? And—here’s the more salient question—should they be in your work emails?

Emoji use has risen steadily since their creation in Japan in the late 1990s. For many of us they’re now a normal part of digital communication, but do they belong in the workplace? If you include a smiley emoji in a message to your boss, are you building rapport—or will your boss think you’re unprofessional? How about sending the pile of poo emoji to a colleague?

Whether you’re plagued with anxiety wondering which emojis are appropriate, or you’ve been showering your colleagues with emojis left and right, you’ll want to keep reading.

Today we’re navigating the subtle nuances of emoji use in the workplace and delivering some real answers for this oft-asked question of business etiquette.

Why Do We Use Emojis?

If there’s controversy around emojis in business communication, then why do we feel compelled to use them? Why not forego them altogether?

The simple answer: we want to be better understood.

Email communication is notoriously problematic in that it lacks the emotional cues we rely on with face-to-face or phone conversations. Without tone of voice or facial expressions to guide us, there’s a lot of room for misunderstanding when we read an email. Messages meant to be positive are often interpreted as neutral, and neutral messages are interpreted as negative.

Remember that time you wrote your boss a detailed, well-thought-out email, only to receive a terse, one-line response? Chances are your boss was happy with your work, but their email failed to convey the warmth and approval that a face-to-face or phone conversation would have.

No one wants to be misunderstood or perceived as a jerk, so we’ve invented ways to circumvent the ambiguity of email. According to a 2014 study, we use emoticons in our emails not to directly convey emotions, but as context clues to show the recipient how to interpret our message. (For example, including a smiley after a line that’s meant to be a joke.)

But when you send that winkie emoji to your boss, are you communicating more effectively or could it actually be hurting your cause?

Why You Shouldn’t Use Emojis in Work Emails

We may have the best of intentions when we use emojis in our work communication (greater warmth, better rapport!) but recent research on emoji use has presented discouraging results.

Grimly titled The Dark Side of a Smiley: Effects of Smiling Emoticons on Virtual First Impressions, the study found that:

…contrary to actual smiles, smileys do not increase perceptions of warmth and actually decrease perceptions of competence. Perceptions of low competence in turn undermined information sharing.

To sum this up, if you use a smiley in communication with someone you don’t know well, they

• Probably won’t perceive your message as “warmer”
• Probably will perceive you as “less competent.”
• Will probably include less information in their response to you because they see you as incompetent

Ouch! That’s a pretty serious backfire. Based on this new information, should we banish emojis from the workplace forever?

Not entirely.

The study also found that a smiley can replace an in-person smile if you already have a relationship with the recipient.

Conclusion? Emojis can be helpful when used in the right context.

Which is great, but now you’re probably wondering what the “right” context is. To answer that question we’ve put together some dos and don’ts of emoji use, and it all comes down to who your audience is.

When NOT to Use Emojis

It’s generally a bad idea to use emojis in the following contexts:

• With someone you have not developed a relationship with
• With your boss or other superiors
• With your clients
• With coworkers you have an uncomfortable relationship with
• In a workplace that is inherently more formal (If you’re wearing a suit, you shouldn’t be using emojis!)
• To fully replace words (e.g., using a heart emoticon instead of the word “love”)
• In a message with bad news or an uncomfortable request (e.g., adding a frownie after asking someone to work over the weekend may annoy the recipient instead of smoothing things over)
• In ambiguously worded messages (The best way to avoid miscommunication is to write clear, unambiguous messages!)

When Emojis Are Beneficial

Here are some contexts where you can use emojis to build rapport:

• With your coworkers if your workplace culture is informal (e.g., at most tech startups)
• Shooting quick emails to your close-knit team
• Chatting with your team on Slack or other messaging apps
• In correspondence with someone at the same level as you who also uses emojis

Here’s a tip: Even in contexts where emoji use is okay, it’s still best to stay away from unusual, ambiguous or offensive emojis. So stick to the basic smiley and limit the smiling poop to your personal texts.

Will You Join Us for March MADness?

Yesterday, Selection Sunday marked the start of the frenetic sports season many like to call March Madness. Today, we’re launching a bracket like the one you may have filled out yesterday, but our March MADness tournament contains only the most infuriating, enraging work communication pet peeves. These annoying office habits keep you from understanding—or, sometimes, liking—your coworkers, and we’re trying to find the worst habit you can form at work. Over the next month, we’ll be asking our community to vote for the worst habit, ultimately crowning the March MADness Champion on _____.

Below are descriptions of the four “conferences” for March MADness, as well as a list of all the “teams.” Have a pet peeve we missed? Comment below with your work communication pet peeve.

Work Chat Woes

These are the Slack, Google Hangouts, HipChat, and other work chat program sins we all commit. While many of the office instant messenger programs have made work life easier, they have their dissenters. Those folks probably hate these chat behaviors.

1 Gifs that keep on giffing

2 Emoji overload

3 The one-word line

4 The never-ending message

5 Early-morning chatters

6 Late-night chatters

7 Giant group chat

8 Blowing up the group chat

Email Fails

Ah, email. As the default business communication method, email has been used, overused, and abused for decades. Every professional tries to escape “email jail” (the constant state of reading and responding to emails), with varying degrees of success. Even if your inbox has been tamed, these obnoxious email habits make email jail into email hell.

9 CC overcrowding

10 Boss CC sneak attack

11 Over-forwarding

12 The “+1” response

13 Email scheduling hell

14 Email autonotification hell

15 Should’ve messaged

16 No subject line

Call Catastrophes

Interruptions, introductions, dropped calls. We all know the perils of conference calls and video chats. Even if they’re necessary for connecting with remote team members and other offices, calls can strain even the best work relationships. And if you experience these call habits, you’ll probably feel more than strained.

17 Background noise nuisances

18 Call distractions

19 Should’ve emailed

20 Should’ve spoken IRL

21 Eternal introductions

22 Total tardiness

23 The long talker

24 The interrupter

IRL Irritations

Of course, sometimes your coworkers will irritate you in real life. These smaller, more subtle bad habits may not ruin your day, but they can add up to something more enraging over time. Even if you work with angels, you’ve probably experienced one of these horrible office habits.

25 Passive-aggressive notes

26 Whiteboard woes

27 Temperature wars

28 Loud music

29 Early morning chatters

30 Close talkers

31 “But . . .”

32 “Well, actually . . .”

Want to start participating now? The polls for the first matchup between X CC overcrowding and the boss CC sneak attack, as well as the second matchup between gifs that keep on gifing and emoji overload are live. Vote for your least favorite!

What Is Verbing?

• To verb a noun means to use an ordinary noun as a verb in a sentence.
• English is flexible about the grammatical function of individual words. If you use a noun in the verb slot of a sentence, most people will understand what you mean.
• Be careful about verbing in very formal contexts, especially when there is already a common verb that would convey your meaning. Some people find verbing annoying.

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Have you ever friended someone on Facebook? Friend is a noun. Adding an -ed to the end to turn it into a verb is called verbing. Some nouns that people convert into verbs already have verb forms. For example, the verb befriend means to make friends with someone. However, social media made friending popular. Now, the dictionary defines the new verb as “to add a person to one’s list of social media contacts.” What else is there to know about verbing?

How to Verb

There are lots of ways to express the idea of turning a noun into a verb. The noun form of the act is verbification. Besides “to verb,” you might see “to verbify.”

Did you know that noun-to-verb conversions are abundant in English? People have been doing it for centuries. In fact, “verbify” is itself an example of the phenomenon. Nouns from all aspects of life are verbified:

Let’s table the proposal until we get more information.

I plated the asparagus next to the sweet potatoes to highlight the contrasting colors.

The flight has not yet deplaned.

The computer program is taking forever to download.

Modern-day speakers often verbify brand names.

Before the first day of class, she googled her professor.

I had to xerox a hundred copies of my résumé.

When is the last time you skyped your relatives?

Some verbs, like to google and to xerox, become so common that they are included in lowercase form in dictionaries.

How do you feel about new verbs? Some are fads, but others might stand the test of time. If you’d like to try making some verbs yourself, social media is a great place to test your creations. If someone objects, you can always unfriend them!

What to Do When Someone Takes Credit for Your Work

You feel great after finishing a project, but then someone else takes the credit. What should you do? If you lose your cool, you could lose your job. Don’t run the risk! Let’s look at three scenarios and some strategies that can help you turn a bad situation into a favorable one.

The Passive Praise Stealer

You collaborate with a coworker on a project. Later, you overhear your boss commend your colleague: “What a fantastic job! You must have devoted a lot of thought and effort to this task.” You expect your coworker to say they couldn’t have done it without you, but instead he just smiles and says thanks. How will you ever get ahead if your colleague steals your thunder?

Suggestion: First of all, don’t assume that your coworker intentionally deprived you of your due honor. Perhaps he’s nervous around your boss, or he thought that your boss would commend you personally. However, you don’t have to be passive just because your colleague is. Why not give yourself some credit? Approach your boss privately. Ask him for feedback about the task. You might say something like, “I was wondering if you were satisfied with how the project turned out, or if you needed me to make a few tweaks.” When he expresses surprise, modestly explain your role and your investment in the project’s success. And, lest you become a hypocrite, mention an essential contribution of your colleague too.

The Blatant Snatch-and-Grabber

What if your fellow worker took credit for your work on purpose? Suppose you discovered that she lied to claim your writing as her own. You might be tempted to shout and break things, but that won’t do any good. How can you cope?

Suggestion: For published pieces, alert your colleague to her tendency to “borrow.” You might even use a report from a plagiarism detection program as evidence. If your work hasn’t been published, why not give her a chance to come clean? Not everyone agrees on the definition of plagiarism. She might feel that changing a few words makes the writing her own. However, all is not lost. In an email or in person, tactfully point out that her writing closely resembled the work that you prepared. If she admits her guilt and agrees to rewrite the piece, you can move past the incident in peace.

On the other hand, she might deny it. Consider the case of Kaavya Viswanathan. When this Harvard student faced charges of plagiarism, she claimed it was “unconscious.” Her story fell apart, literally, when her publisher found out that she copied several passages of her novel from different sources. The publisher gave her the boot and immediately pulled the book out of stores. So even if you can’t prove it this time, you can prepare yourself to respond if your coworker tries the same trick again. Take preventive measures by considering how your associate managed to get her hands on your work. Do you need to update your passwords? Lock your desk drawers? Send early drafts of important documents to your boss for review. If Stealy McGrabby tries to take credit for the work later, she will be caught red-handed.

The Big Boss Thief

What if the thief isn’t a colleague? What if the thief is your boss? People may steal ideas during brainstorming sessions, when ideas are bouncing all over the place. What happens when he acts as if he came up with the idea by himself?

Suggestion: In these types of situations, you shouldn’t be too offended if the idea-stealer uses your idea. He may not remember who said what, only that he was inspired! Limit the ideas you share at work if you don’t want them to be “company property.” For example, imagine you have a killer idea for an invention. Some businesses specify in the contract that anything you develop during the time you work for them belongs to the company. You might decide to keep your most creative thoughts to yourself until you have the freedom to develop it without anyone else laying claim.

Is there any other way you can deal with the situation without risking your position? In 1999, the Center for Academic Integrity concluded that honor codes that promote “honesty, trust, fairness, respect and responsibility” make a significant difference in the behavior of students. The study further revealed that engagement influences how effective an honor code is. In one test, one group of students read an honor code before taking a test. The second group signed the code attesting that they read and understood it. While the first group was less likely to cheat than students with no honor code, the second group had no instances of cheating at all! What can you do to encourage others to be honest and fair when it comes to taking the credit? Perhaps it’s as simple as making them aware that it’s the right thing to do.

Happily Ever After, or Not: The Influence of Mother Goose

May 1 is Mother Goose Day, established in 1987 by Gloria T. Delamar upon the publication of her book, Mother Goose; From Nursery to Literature.

The day is a time for reflecting on fairy tales, acting them out, making and wearing Mother Goose costumes, or reading fairy tales aloud. It also could be a time to consider how much these stories have influenced modern writing. Of course, this includes works such as Gregory Maguire’s Wicked series, based on L. Frank Baum’s Wizard of Oz books, or novels like Brom’s Child Thief, which paints a much darker picture of Peter Pan and the lost boys. There are countless novels based on fairy tales.

Consider, for example, romance novels. In many fairy tales, we meet a prince who is at first a frog—until he receives a kiss. For the heroine, it is rarely love at first sight. The same holds true in romance novels, which often follow a general pattern: the heroine and hero meet and at first don’t like each other, or at least the heroine doesn’t like the hero. She thinks he’s too arrogant or too self-centered—in some way, he’s a frog. Gradually, however, as they spend more time together and learn more about each other, these feelings change. Maybe the hero isn’t as arrogant as it first appeared. In fact, maybe he’s a pretty good guy, somebody worthy of love. And soon the two characters do fall in love, and in fairy-tale fashion, live happily ever after.

Fairy tales have influenced modern writing in many ways. Many of the tales are dark, providing a nearly endless supply of ideas for horror and revenge novels. For example, the wicked stepmother appears as a man in novels like Emma Donoghue’s Room. Undoubtedly, the story was influenced by tales like “Cinderella,” in which the central character was kept prisoner and maltreated. There are echoes of “The Pied Piper” in various revenge novels like Stephen King’s Carrie, in which the main character seeks revenge just as the Pied Piper did when those who hired him refused to pay him for ridding the city of rats.

Most often, the themes of fairy tales are transparent. “The Boy Who Cried Wolf” regrets his folly in asking for help when he doesn’t need it. “The Emperor’s New Clothes” shows the folly of pretense. Such themes appear in countless modern novels.

According to Bill Gray, “there are fairy tale elements in some of the great Victorian novels, for example Jane Eyre and Great Expectations, not to mention darker works such as The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, The Picture of Dorian Gray and Dracula itself.” Gray goes on to site the influence of fables in Orwell’s Animal Farm and in the works of Tolkien and C.S. Lewis.

It’s not difficult to think of many modern novels that rely on fairy tales. In many cases, such themes are also observable in fantasy novels. So-called “Sword and Sorcery” novels certainly fit the category, as do those with magical creatures such as elves and dwarfs.

To celebrate Mother Goose Day, perhaps you and a group of friends can try to think of the fairy tales behind your favorite modern novels. Have fun!