9.1 Common errors

There may be no short cut to good spelling, but there are some common pitfalls which you can avoid. Here are some areas which need special care:

Words ending

—ant/ent eg: dependent, dependant

—ance/ence eg: observance, correspondence

—ite/ate eg: infinite, obstinate

—ible/able eg: fallible, reasonable

—ibility/ability eg: fallibility, disability

—arate/erate eg: separate, desperate

—ege/edge eg: privilege, acknowledge

—cede/ceed/sede eg: precede, proceed, supersede

—ice/ise eg: noun practice, verb practise

Words beginning

—de/di eg: despair, divide

—im/in eg: impossible, inconceivable

Words including

—ie/ei The old rule is a good one: I before E except after C, when the sound is E.

—double letters (see US/UK spelling below)

—our this often becomes or before a suffix eg: vigour/vigorous

Words which sound like other words eg: principle/principal, affect/effect

Trust your dictionary, not your ears.

9.2 Capitals

Proper nouns (names) such as Fiji, Spain, Scandinavia, the Amazon, Lake Michigan, Mont

Blanc, etc, have an initial capital letter. In English, adjectives and nouns denoting nationality

and language do as well: English, Old English, Chukchi, Sanskrit, and Italian. Historical periods are treated in the same way: the Middle Ages, the Renaissance.

Words denoting religions, movements or ‘schools’ and peoples, together with the adjectives

referring to these, and words denoting people belonging to them, have an initial capital: Christianity, Christian; Dadaism, Dadaist, Dadaistic; Fabianism, Fabianist, Fabian; Islam,

Islamic; Jew, Jewish. The Bible, the Old Testament, the New Testament, and the Koran all

take capitals, as do all book titles. However, the adjective ‘biblical’ does not.

A common noun is often capitalised when it forms part of a name or a title. Thus the Sociology Department gets capitals, but the phrase ‘studying sociology’ does not. Claudius in Hamlet, is ‘the King’, just as one would write ‘the Queen’ when referring to Elizabeth II or some other specific queen. But king or queen used in a general way, does not have a capital letter. For example, ‘The king of a country should not hold too much power’. God gets a capital when one is naming the God of Christian, Islamic or Jewish faiths. Words used as names for God are often capitalised too, such as the Almighty, the Creator etc, although the practice of capitalising pronouns referring to God (Him, His, Thy will be done, etc.) is dying out. Writing of ‘gods’ from other cultures does not require capitalization, unless they are named.

9.3 Us V uk Spelling

Please use UK spelling at all times in your own writing. However, some of the texts which

you read will be printed with US spellings, so it is useful to know the main differences.

• British ll/ American l: A single consonant at the end of a word is often doubled before a suffix in UK English, but not in US English: revelling/reveling.

• British re/ American er: centre/center, metre/meter, theatre/theater

• British ogue/ American og: catalogue/catalog, demagogue/demagog

• British our/ American or: colour/color, humour/humor, vigour/vigor

• British se/ American ze: criticise/criticize, analyse/analyze

It is acceptable to reproduce US spellings in quotations if you are quoting from an American

text, such as Robert Frost’s poem ‘The Road Not Taken’:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I —

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.²

Further Reading

Burchfield, R. W., ed., Fowler’s Modern English Usage, 3rd ed (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998)

Gee, Robyn, and Carol Watson, Usborne Guide to Better English: Grammar, Spelling and Punctuation (London: Usborne, 2004)

Partridge, Eric, Usage and Abusage: A Guide to Good English (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1999)

Peck, John and Martin Coyle. The Student’s Guide to Writing: Grammar, Spelling and Punctuation (Houndmills: Palgrave, 1999)

Ritter, R. M. ed., The Oxford Dictionary for Writers and Editors, 2nd ed (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000)

Strunk, William and E. B. White, The Elements of Style (London: Longman, 1999)

Truss, Lynne, Eats, Shoots and Leaves: The Zero-Tolerance Approach to Punctuation (London: Profile Books, 2003)

QUICK FIX: LANGUAGE 1. Write in clear, simple, formal English. 2. Get apostrophes in the right places. It’s should never appear in your essay. If you mean it is, write it out in full. If you mean its = belonging to it, there is no apostrophe. 3. Avoid comma splices; use a semi-colon or start a new sentence. 4. Think about clauses. Do not have too many in one sentence. It is always better to write short, clear sentences whenever possible. Do not present subordinate clauses as complete sentences. These are sentence fragments. 5. Make sure that single nouns have single verbs and that plural nouns have plural verbs. 6. Write about authors in past tense (unless they are still alive). Write about fictional characters and events in present tense. 7. Use pronouns with care. Make sure that the pronoun refers to the most recent available noun. Avoid vague pronouns such as ‘this’ and ‘it’, especially at the start of sentences. 8. Do not rely on Microsoft to sort out your grammar and spelling. 9. Always read through your work carefully once you have finished. Correct any mistakes that you find, by hand if necessary. 10. Buy a dictionary and use it.

SECTION C: SOURCES