English spelling
How words look
English spelling is the system of written representation for the English language, notorious for its inconsistencies and irregularities.
Because English absorbed words from Latin, French, Greek, and Germanic sources—often preserving original spellings—the relationship between letters and sounds is unpredictable: through, though, thought, tough.
Spelling reform movements have repeatedly failed, leaving English with silent letters, multiple spellings for the same sound, and the same spelling for different sounds.
- prefixesElements preceding roots
- vowel soundsOpen-mouth speech tones
- alphabetLanguage's letter system
- capitalizationUsing big letters properly
- Latin rootsRoman word origins
schwa · silent letters · double letters · suffixes · punctuation · homophones · digraphs · homographs · Great Vowel Shift · loanwords · regional variations · syllables · inflectional endings · heteronyms · diphthongs · compound words · root words · trigraphs
- spellingorthography, silent e, silent letters, double consonants, double vowels