Cut Spelling - Rules

Rules

Cut Spelling operates under three main substitution rules to transform traditional spellings into cut spellings:

  1. Letters irrelevant to pronunciation. This rule deletes most silent letters, except when these letters (such as "magic e") help indicate pronunciation. Omitting or including the wrong silent letters are common errors. Examples: peace → pece, except → exept, plaque → plaq, blood → blod, pitch → pich.
  2. Cutting unstressed vowels. English unstressed syllables are usually pronounced with the vowel schwa /ə/, which has no standard spelling, but can be represented by any vowel letter. Writing the wrong letter in these syllables is a common error (for example, the incorrect spelling seperate seems almost as common as the correct separate). Cut Spelling eliminates these vowel letters completely before approximants (/l/ and /r/) and nasals (/m/, /n/, and /ŋ/). In addition, some vowel letters are dropped in suffixes, reducing the confusion between -able and -ible. Examples: symbol → symbl, victim → victm, lemon → lemn, glamour/glamor → glamr, permanent → permnnt, waited → waitd, churches → churchs, warmest → warmst, edible → edbl.
  3. Simplifying doubled consonants. This rule helps with another of the most common spelling errors: failing to double letters (accommodate and committee are often misspelled) or introducing erroneously doubled letters. Cut Spelling does not eliminate all doubled letters: in some words (especially two-syllable words) the doubled consonant letter is needed to differentiate from another differently pronounced word (e.g., holly and holy). Examples: innate → inate, spell → spel.

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Famous quotes containing the word rules:

    “The young break rules for fun. The old for profit.”
    —Mason Cooley (b. 1927)

    “Those rules of old discovered, not devised,
    Are Nature sill, but Nature methodized;
    Nature, like liberty, is but restrained
    By the same laws which first herself ordained.”
    —Alexander Pope (1688–1744)

    “A man often thinks he rules himself, when all the while he is ruled and managed; and while his understanding directs one design, his affections imperceptibly draw him into another.”
    —François, Duc De La Rochefoucauld (1613–1680)