Table of Contents

1. Broken Rules and Word Stories

2. Word Families

3. Homophones

4. Mnemonics

5. Counting Syllables

6. Affixes

7. The Spelling Formula

8. The Difference Between Vowels and Consonants

9. What Consonants Say

10. Illegal Letters

11. The Single Vowels

12. The Letter 'y'

13. Final Silent E, Jobs 1-3

14. Job 4 of Silent 'E' (a.k.a. 'consonant plus-le')

15a. The Wicked Sisters and Other Wacky R's

15b. More Wacky R's 15c. Final Silent E and Wacky R's

16. The Vowel Generator

17. Strong and Weak Syllables

18. Schwa

19a. To Double or not to Double?

19b. When the Final Syllable is Like a 1.1.1 Word

20. Final Silent E and Suffixes

21. The return of illegal 'i'

22. The Suffix Generator

23. More Fascinating Patterns

24. Some Delightful Lists

Appendix 1. Forgive me, Scotland

Appendix 2. The Orders Of Intelligence

Appendix 3. The Triangle Game

Appendix 4. Why Not just Make Spelling Simpler?

About the Author

Lyn Stone is a linguist and literacy and language specialist in Victoria, Australia Lyn's website www.linguistlearning.com provides resources for teachers and other professionals interested in linguistics in the classroom.