The English apostrophe s and s apostrophe cause a lot of problems, even for native speakers. This lesson's task is to help you learn about possessives and contractions that need apostrophes and plurals that don't.
Whether to spell any given word with ie or ei can often stump native English speakers. In school many of us were taught the mnemonic device "I before E except after C or when sounding like A as in 'neighbor' and 'weigh.' " This is a fairly good rule, but it has a lot of exceptions.
The English words lightening and lightning are only one letter apart in spelling and pronunciation, but worlds apart in meaning. The lightning bolt of comprehension you get after reading this lesson will start lightening your confusion.
The words loose and lose are mixed up in writing; for some reason, many people write loose when they really mean lose. But there's no reason to lose your mind worrying about this, just lose the extra o!
Here are some common, simple, and easily avoidable English spelling mistakes. Print this out and tape it to your monitor so that you never make these mistakes again!
One of the more notable differences between English as it is spoken in different countries is in the spelling of word endings, and the British spelling is nearly always closer to the French.
The words stationary and stationery are often confused by English speakers due to their similar spelling and pronunciation. If you remain stationary in front of your computer, you can copy this lesson onto your own stationery.
Some say tomāto, some say tomăto, but when there is more than one, everyone has to add -es to make it plural. Learn which English words -es in the plural.