Lesson · Spelling to Sound · The famous rule

I Before E, and Its Failure Rate

Most students are given a saying: i before e, except after c. On the 58 places in the 2,800 words where i and e sit together, it is right 36 times. That is 62.1%. The 22 misses are not random, and narrowing the rule to words said with ee lifts it to 14 of 18.

Open the interactive lesson Practice

i before e, except after c right on 36 of 58 62.1% only where the letters say ee right on 14 of 18 77.8%

Counted on the 2,800 words

Core ideas

What this lesson establishes

Three ideas.

A rule is a bet, and this one is a poor bet

The rule is right on 36 of 58 words. That is a little over six in ten. If you guess the order of the letters with this rule you will spell about four in ten of these words wrong. A student who knows this will check the dictionary; a student who does not will trust the saying.

The failures come in groups

Of the 22 misses, eight have the letters eigh, as in eight and weight. Nine are the letters cie, as in science and efficient. Five are alone: either, neither, foreign, protein and weird. Three groups explain 22 words.

The saying was made for one sound

The rule is about words said with ee, as in believe and receive. Where the letters say something else, the rule has no claim. Apply it only where the letters say ee and it is right on 14 of 18.

The material

The 22 words that break it

Read the misses in three groups, and the rule starts to make sense.

Here is the most quoted spelling rule in English. I before e, except after c. Most people who have learned English have heard it, and many repeat it when they are not sure how to spell believe or receive.

The lab runs it on every ie and ei in the 2,800 words. There are 58. The rule says ie unless the letter before the pair is c, and then it says ei.

The score

The rule is right on 36 of the 58, which is 62.1%. Twenty-two words break it. In a list of the 2,800 commonest words, that is a saying that is wrong more often than it is worth.

Those 22 are not spread about at random. Sorted, they make three groups.

The three kinds of miss

The first group is eigh: eight, eighteen, eighty, weigh, weight, neighbor, neighborhood and height. That is eight words. In most of them the letters say ay, so they are not about ee at all. Height is said with the sound of the word eye, which is a different case again.

The second group is cie: ancient, efficiency, efficient, science, scientific, scientist, society, species and sufficient. That is nine words. They are the part of the saying that fails after c: the rule says ei there, and every one of them has ie.

The third group is five words that stand alone: either, neither, foreign, protein and weird. Each has ei with no c before it, and each is said its own way.

A better question

The saying was made to help with words said with ee. So the lab can ask a second question: how often is the rule right where the letters line up with the parts of the word, the beats it is said in, and the dictionary, a book that records how words are said, has ee at that place? That leaves 18 words, and the rule is right on 14, which is 77.8%.

Forty words were set aside. Fourteen do not line up, which means the letters and the parts of the word cannot be matched one to one, and 26 are said with something other than ee at that place. The four misses are either, neither, protein and species. The first three have ei with no c, and the last has ie after a c.

What to keep

Keep the first half of the saying for words said with ee. Learn either, neither and protein as three words. Learn that after c the saying is right only where the pair says ee, as in receive; in the nine cie words the i and the e are said apart, as in science, or the c is part of a sh sound, as in efficient. Learn that eigh is a group of its own. With those four facts, you have a better rule than the saying.

Interactive

A spelling rule against the dictionary

Each rule reads only the letters; the dictionary says what is actually said

the rule—

words scored—

the rule is right—

share right—

wrong—

the words it gets wrong—

set aside—

different sounds—

Where the sounds come from

Every sound, part count and strong part here is read from the first pronunciation in CMUdict, the Carnegie Mellon University Pronouncing Dictionary, which records American speech. Its licence asks that this notice travel with anything made from it:

Copyright (C) 1993-2015 Carnegie Mellon University. All rights reserved.

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This work was supported in part by funding from the Defense Advanced
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Science Foundation of the United States of America, and by member
companies of the Carnegie Mellon Sphinx Speech Consortium. We acknowledge
the contributions of many volunteers to the expansion and improvement of
this dictionary.

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Method

Using the rule, and knowing when not to

Four steps.

Find the pair

Look for ie or ei in the word. The rule has nothing to say about a word that has neither.

Say the sound

If the pair says ee, as in believe, the rule applies. If it says ay, as in weigh, the letters are eigh and the rule does not apply.

Look at the letter before the pair

After a c, write ei. After any other letter, write ie.

Learn the nine words with c before ie

Science, efficient and sufficient break the rule and make up the largest group of misses.

Check yourself

Score 0 / 0

Choose the answer you can justify.

Friend, receive, weight, science

Four words, one rule, and four different results.

friend, believe ie, no c before it right receive ei after c right weight, eight ei said ay miss science ie after c miss

Friend and believe follow the rule. Receive is the rule working the other way: after c it says ei, and perceive does the same. Those two are the only words in the table where the rule says ei and is right. Weight and science break it in different ways, and the difference is the point of the lesson.

Common mistakes

Treating a saying as a ruleIt is easy to remember, and that is why it has lasted. It is right 36 times in 58, which is 62.1%. A rule that fails nearly four times in ten is not one to trust without checking.

Thinking the c clause is the safe partAfter c the rule says ei. On the list, the words with a c before the pair are receive and perceive, which follow it, and nine words with cie, which do not.

Applying it to every pair of these lettersThe rule was made for words said with ee. In weight and height the letters say something else, and the rule was never about them. Count only the words said with ee and the score is 14 of 18.

Check your understanding

✓

Finish when you can apply the saying about i before e to a word, say how often it is right, and sort the words where it fails into the groups that cause the failures.

You should be able to find every ie and ei in a word, predict the spelling from the rule, read the score off the table, name the three kinds of miss, and explain why the same rule looks better when it is applied only where the letters say ee.

Note: The saying has two halves, and the second half, except after c, is the weaker. Of 11 words with a c before the pair, only two follow it. If you keep the first half and look up words with cie, you do better than with the whole saying.