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   Spelling:

Illegible handwriting and typographical mistakes are often perceived as spelling mistakes. 

One of the joys of writing online is the ease with which writers can revise. Spell-check is a great tool. Remember, however, that spell-check only checks to make certain that the words are spelled correctly. It does not check to see if the words are appropriate for that particle sentence. (whoops! I meant "particular sentence"!) 
General spelling rules to remember: 
  • i before e:     This little spelling rule set to rhyme has been around since the stone age and has been memorized by school children for generations. It helps students remember if " their" or "thier" is the correct form. If you were never taught this little ditty before, there's no time like the present to memorize it:
 " i before e, 
except after c, 
or when sounding like a as in neighbor and weigh." 
  •  making plurals:    Most nouns simply require an -s or an -es  suffix to form their plurals.
form - forms,  house - houses 
            However, words ending in -ch, sh, s, x, z, or o (with a consonant appearing before it) use the -es ending in the plural. 

 

tax - taxes 
potato - potatoes 

           

Words ending in o (with a vowel appearing before it) require the -s ending in the plural. 

radio -radios 
  
  • making plurals with vowel changes:   There are several words in English that change their inner vowels to show plurals:
woman - women 
foot - feet 
  
  • making plurals with vowel & consonant changes:   Sometimes, the changes are not limited to simply adding -s or -es or a quick vowel change in the center of the word. Instead, part of a word itself changes vowels and consonants together to form their plural.

die-dice 
mouse - mice 

  

  • The words that change vowels & consonants most commonly are words that end in -f  or -fe. 

knife - knives 
scarf - scarves 
  

  • non-countable nouns & plurals:    Non-countable nouns have the same form for both the singular and the plural.
deer - deer 
sand - sand (There is no such word as "sands") 
rice - rice 
Although you might be able to count each grain of rice or sand, the plural of sand is sand. If you wanted to indicate more than one grain of sand, you would write "grains of sand". 
  
  • There are exceptions to each of these rules!