The Complete Guide to English Spelling Rules (31 page)

Spelling rule #3. The
ew
spelling is usually found at the end of a word:

Note that there are only two commonly used English words that start with
ew.

The
ew
is not often found in the middle of a word.

Spelling rule #4: The
oo
spelling is usually found in the middle of a word:

Note that the double
o
is quite rare at the beginning of a word, though there are some scientific words in this group.

There are barely a dozen words that have the double
o
at the end. About half of these are exotic words.

A single
o
may sometimes have the
oo
sound, with or without the silent
e
, but there are not many such words.

Spelling rule #5: There is another very large group of words that uses the
ou
spelling to produce the
oo
sound. Excluding words that contain the suffix
ous
, we have about sixty words. However, many of these words are recently assimilated French words, or words of French origin that have not yet been anglicized.

There are many other words in this group that may be considered fully assimilated, no matter their origin.

Spelling rule #6: The
ou
is almost always used in the middle of a word. Few words start or finish with
ou
.

Note that there a several other ways to produce the
oo
sound in English.

Many scientific words use the
oe
diphthong, but not always with the
oo
sound. For example,
onomatopoeia
or
coelacanth
. Which leaves us with just two words in this group—
canoe
and
shoe
.

The
eau
combination is used in only one word and its derivatives—
beauty, beautiful, beauteous, beautician.

The
iew
combination is used in only one word and its derivatives—
view, interview, review, purview.

The
ough
spelling with the
oo
sound is used in only one word and its derivative—
through
and
throughout
.

The
wo
group consists of just a tiny group of words.

In the
ieu
group, we have a very small group of words that are mostly of French origin: