Conquering Spelling Demons

Correct spelling is expected of an educated person. Misspelling a word in a letter, an e-mail, or on a r#65533;sum#65533; is embarrassing. But spelling English words is a challenge. Letters that make the same sound like f and gh and silent letters like the b in "subtle" make our language complex. Is "surprise" spelled with an s or a z? Does "accommodate" have one or two m's? Is it "basically" or "basicly"? Of course, there is spell-check, but it doesn't detect an incorrect homonym. For...
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Correct spelling is expected of an educated person. Misspelling a word in a letter, an e-mail, or on a r#65533;sum#65533; is embarrassing. But spelling English words is a challenge. Letters that make the same sound like f and gh and silent letters like the b in "subtle" make our language complex. Is "surprise" spelled with an s or a z? Does "accommodate" have one or two m's? Is it "basically" or "basicly"? Of course, there is spell-check, but it doesn't detect an incorrect homonym. For people who can never remember how to spell a certain word, Conquering Spelling Demons is a boon. The author suggests memory tricks for hundreds of such words. The memory devices presented are original ones created by the author, a former English teacher, along with traditional tricks and those gleaned from a variety of sources. They include thinking of a smaller word that encompasses the difficult letters (like "a rat" in "separate), remembering an acrostic sentence, pronouncing the word correctly, and using rhythm as a word is spelled. With the tips in this book, writers will be spared from searching for a synonym for a puzzling word. They will not need to resort to a dictionary, which may not help if one doesn't know how to spell the word in the first place!Distinguished people like Benjamin Franklin, Dale Carnegie, George Bernard Shaw, and Noah Webster advocated for spelling reform in vain. Until their dream becomes a reality, writers would be wise to keep Conquering Spelling Demons close at hand.