by Jennie Ruby 
A colleague wrote to me because she was trying to remember that little rhyme used by teachers to help us remember how to spell words with the letters e and i:
Probably 40 years or more after learning this rhyme in elementary school, she still had it right. Of course, later in life we find out that things are a little more complicated than what we learned back then. As a copyeditor, I made up an additional sentence for the end of the rhyme:
Well, okay, my additional sentence doesn't exactly rhyme, but at least it gets the job done.
My question for you this week is this: Do you remember other little rhymes, tricks, or memory aids for grammar and spelling from your school days? Please share them with the rest of us. We'll take a look, see if they need updating, see if they are still true, and see if we can still get use out of them long after we've been out of school.
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Here are the results from last week's questions about spelling preferences:
- Dialogue beat dialog
- Catalog beat catalogue
- Sync overwhelmingly beat synch (Kay Honaker pointed out that synch looks like it would rhyme with inch.)
- In a surprise upset, advisor beat adviser by a landslide.
- High-tech shut out hi-tec, with no one choosing the latter.
- Wi-fi was also a winner by a mile, but wifi did get a few votes, even though, as Kay Honaker commented, wifi looks like it should sound like wih-fee.
I like clear results, and the results among this newsletter's readers are quite clear. So add these spellings to your style guide and join the crowd!
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