Short Articles

The following are short articles dealing with various aspects of English spelling and vocabulary. Some are old, some new. Some are fairly finished, many are works in progress, for which I especially invite comments, questions, and suggestions.

Frequency of Occurrence of Vowel Digraph, Trigraph, and Diphthong Spellings 139 KB: This table was prepared in answer to a question concerning the frequency of vowel digraph and trigraph and diphthong spellings. It is based on an analysis of 6,100 high frequency words from the Thorndike-Lorge Teacher’s Word Book of 30,000 Words (NY: Teachers College Press, 1944, repr. 1972). The phonetic analysis is essentially that given in the American Heritage Dictionary.
How Do You Spell [d]?: On the Expansion of Orthographic Knowledge 145 KB: A short article that argues that there is a wide range useful information and knowledge that can help students of spelling. Teachers don't have to settle for the ol' “Give 'em a list on Monday and a test on Friday.” It presents an ordered list of rule-like propositions that illustrate how orthographic knowledge expands to include information from phonology, word structure, grammar, etymology -- and in some cases areas outside the study of language, like geography and history. (Added May 2004)
The 1-2-3: A Formula for English Compositions 145 KB: Admittedly, the 1-2-3 doesn't have much to do with spelling, but over the years it has helped a lot of novice writers. In one form or another it has been taught to 4th graders, middle school students, high schoolers, university undergraduates, and even some Master's candidates struggling with particularly intractable theses. For years I taught it not only to my college composition classes but also to English majors who were tutoring writing students in Central Washington University's Academic Skills Center. They then used it with their Center students, and many of them continued to use it after they graduated and went on to become middle and high school and college English instructors. For a time it may well have been the most widely pirated composition “text” in the state of Washington.; If you think the 1-2-3 would be useful, download it and use it with your students in whatever way works best for you. The only constraint I place is that you not sell copies of it. And I would appreciate hearing your impressions of how it worked for you and your students.
On Vowels and Consonants--Or, All You Ever Wanted to Know, But... 163 KB: Continuing the academic tradition that a dead horse once beaten is worth beating again, this piece continues the discussion of the vowel-consonant distinction, but it includes a look at distinctive feature analysis, prototype theory, syllabic consonants, and some Welsh tongue-twisters. (Added May 2004)
Sometimes a Vowel Is Not a Vowel, and Sometimes a Consonant Is 83 KB: An article that covers some of the same ground covered elsewhere on this site but which provides more historical and pedagogical rationale for a distinction often treated shabbily. (Added May 2004)
Words and Some of Their Ways: A reprint of an article published in the April, 2003 issue of California English, dealing with strategies for using word analysis and etymology as aids in teaching spelling and vocabulary.
Orthographic Confessions: A post-sabbatical talk given at Central Washington University in May of 1985, which attempted to demonstrate that paying an English teacher to travel in the South Pacific and read and write about English spelling was not really a candidate for the Golden Fleece Award.
A Casebook of Misspellings: A collection of misspellings from college remedial spelling students in a controlled test environment, compiled in the late 1980's and early 1990's. There are also some observations on possible implications of those misspellings. We were interested in what these misspellings could tell us about working on the individual students' problems, but we were also interested in seeing if there was some way that analyzing misspellings could provide a clue to what makes some words more difficult to spell than others. If there is such a way, we did not find it, but the orderly listing of misspellings may be of use to others.
On Dictionaries and Other Helps for Teaching Vocabulary and Spelling: Brief descriptions of the dictionaries and other books on English words that I have found most useful.
Explication, Evolution, and Orthography (Revised and expanded October, 2006) 329 KB: This longish article describes how the explication of words as it is employed in the Lexis database fits into my view of English orthography as an evolving complex system. It attempts to describe the development of English spelling by applying principles from modern evolution theory and complexity theory to historical data on English spellings. It then discusses some of the major problems involved in the practice of explication within an orthography that has evolved and continues to do so. Readers who have suggestions or questions or criticisms of the description presented here are invited to participate in the Lexis forum.