There are many words in English that differ by only one letter, and when it’s the same letter repeated, it’s easy to get confused. However, English pronunciation comes to the rescue to help with English spelling rules, and there’s an easy way to tell the difference between words that have a single letter and words that have a doubled letter: the sound of the vowel. Learning the pronunciation of a word helps you know which to use to get the word you want.

Take a look at these word pairs and their pronunciations:

scraping / scrapping
(SKRAY-ping / SKRAH-ping)

waging / wagging
(WAY-jing / WAH-ging)

hoping / hopping
(HOH-ping / HAW-ping)

doting / dotting
(DOH-ting / DAW-ting)

diner / dinner
(DAI-nuhr / DIH-nuhr)

caped / capped
(KAYPT / KAHPT)

In each of the pairs, the first word is pronounced with a “long” vowel sound in the first syllable – that is, it has the sound of the letter itself: a = AY, i = AI, o = OH.

In the second words of each pair, the doubled consonant has changed the vowel from a “long” vowel sound to a “short” vowel sound: a = AH, i = IH, o = AW.

Note: In today’s post we focused on single and double consonants, but there are also ways to use pronunciation to help with doubled vowels. We’ll look at those in another post.

Do Facebook “likes” reflect your brand’s social media marketing success? Not really. If you want to accurately assess your social media marketing efforts, don’t look at the number of likes your Facebook posts, shares and photos are getting. Rather, look at your engagement rate.

Your engagement rate on Facebook is a great indicator of success. You’ll want to look at it often and adjust your marketing strategies according to what you find. Seeing how people engage with you online tells you what works, what doesn’t, and what needs to be revisited.

“People talking about this”

So what is your company’s engagement rate? This is a valuable insight that Facebook offers for business on Facebook. It helps you understand and quantify engagement with your brand.

The “People Talking About This” result is simply the number of actual people talking about a post you’ve shared, divided by the total number of likes your page has. This metric has a number of other indicators you need to check often, like “post reach” and “engagement.”
Engagement refers to the total of all user actions people took in relation to your page, including likes, shares, clicks, and comments. Post Reach, on the other hand, is the number of unique people who’ve read a specific post.

These metrics are very important as they indicate the engagement rate of your Facebook page. Learning to use these tools will give you tips on how to optimize your social media marketing campaign.

Improve Facebook engagement

Now that you know how to understand Facebook engagement rate, here are some ways you can boost it.

Flawless grammar – Many people don’t care for bad grammar. Others will post a negative comment or never check your page again because of a grammar mistake.

Since there are all kinds of users that engage with your Facebook page you need to ensure your text is free from grammatical mistakes to avoid grammar casualties.

Have someone proofread your posts before publishing them or use a spellchecker to catch those your eyes cannot. Either way, always double-check your grammar.

No spelling mistakes – Just like grammar, spelling is crucial. Your posts need to be free of misspellings. If you know you’re prone to mistaking “your” and “you’re” in your writing, be sure to double check each post. Run your posts through a spellchecker and always, always read your posts twice before hitting the publish button.

If you want to increase engagement on Facebook you cannot afford to distract your community and followers with spelling and grammar mistakes, can you?

Vary your content – People get easily bored and are more often than not “skim and scan” users.

That’s why it’s crucial that you alternate between different types of content. Publish your own posts, share those of others, switch between images and memes and links and longer posts.

Variety ensures the reader will be coming back for more, and if you only publish posts, people won’t engage as much with your site. Offer them a variety of interesting, relevant posts and you will increase the number of likes, shares and comments on your posts!

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There are many words in the English language that are difficult to spell. Some of those words are difficult because they have clusters of consonants, others because of the “I before E” question, and many words are simply so unusual or uncommon that even the best spellers have to stop and think about the order of the letters. Actually, stopping and thinking is a great way to make sure that you’re spelling all your words correctly. Don’t forget that a few minutes of editing your text will save you time (and possibly embarassment) later.

Whoops! That should be embarrassment. We always get that one wrong …

Doubled letters are hard to handle in many words, and today we’ll look at seven of the words that people often misspell because of that double-letter problem. When you’re learning how to spell a word, it’s a good idea to write the word out several times, and even write it out in a sentence. If your eyes get used to the look of the correctly-spelled word, and your fingers and hand get used to how it feels to type or write it out, you’ll be less likely to misspell the word in the future. We’ve given you an example sentence for each of the frequently-misspelled words below:

embarrass
My mother used to embarrass me by asking my dates all sorts of personal questions.

illegible
Why do you think even the best doctors have such illegible handwriting?

committee
We want you to be on the library funding committee this year.

possession
I knew the game was over when Gonzalez lost possession of the ball with thirty seconds to go.

misspell
Practice every day, and soon you won’t misspell any words!

disapprove
Paul’s father might disapprove of his plan to become a clown, but he’ll pay for a year at the National Circus School anyway.

professor
That professor always grades exams while drinking a cup of tea.

You’ve got a lot of bases to cover when it comes to spelling! You need to memorize rules that will help you remember whether there’s one M or two in the word committee (two), whether you need more than just an S to make a word plural (yes, quite often), and how to avoid making spelling errors with easily-confused words. Since one of the best ways to remember something is to repeat it, it’s useful to spend some time going over things that cause spelling problems, even if it’s just for review. Each time you review a list of words or rules, you’ll create a firmer foundation for the knowledge and stronger links that will help you remember those words in the future. Today, let’s look at three categories of words that create difficulties in spelling: homophones, homonyms, and homographs.

Homophones are words that have different spelling but the same pronunciation. This category of words is tricky if you’re only speaking and listening to the sound of the word, but when you see them written out the words are generally quite different. Getting good at using the right spelling for the right word is really just a matter of getting familiar with the words and how they’re used. Here are some examples of homophones:

aloud / allowed
flour / flower
martial / marshal
thrown / throne

When it comes to homonyms, you might think you’ve solved all your problems! These words have the same spelling and pronunciation, but different meanings. Because the words are identical in appearance and sound, you won’t have to worry about remembering two spellings, but you will have to remember which definition of the word you’re concerned with.

long (in length) / long (to wish for)
bear (the animal) / bear (a burden)
quail (the word) / quail (shrink back)

Homographs have the same spelling, but different pronunciation. Here’s where problems start again, because in this category you’ll find many confusing words, simply because of the way they sound. It’s not logical to have two identically-spelled words sound and mean different things, but there you are, it’s not logical – it’s English! Check out these examples of homographs, and practice saying them out loud.

wind (the movement of air) is pronounced with an IH sound
the verb wind (to wind up a clock) is pronounced with an EYE sound

lead (a soft metal) is pronounced with an EH sound
the verb lead (to go ahead of, to direct) is pronounced with an EE sound

Are you a collector of time assets, or do you find yourself always in debt? Thinking about time as an asset or debt is a unique way of looking at productivity. People often think of productivity as a short-term goal. They’re focused on how to save 10 minutes in the morning by preparing breakfast the night before, or how to shrink a boring office meeting down to 20 minutes only. Although these and other similar strategies are efficient in saving people a couple hours per month, they miss a valuable point. Looking at short-term one-time solutions like this is shortsighted, because in focusing on them we are not taking into consideration how certain actions can save time not just in the present, but also in the future.

When we’re thinking of how to be more productive, how to fit more projects in the twenty-four hours we only get each day, we should be looking at strategies that will save us time for many, many years to come.

“Time as Asset”  (also referred to as Time Asset and Time Debt) is a concept coined by Patrick McKenzie. This approach helps us understand how valuable some productivity-boosting skills truly are.

When you think of ways you can be more productive, it’s best to try and think of more long-term strategies. For instance, it makes more sense to increase your reading speed than it does to skip reading an important report. Increasing your reading speed is an asset; it’s a time asset that will save you many hours over the course of the coming years.

Time Asset: Keyboarding  – How to Cut Down on Typing Time

One way to be more productive in the long run is to improve your typing speed and accuracy. This will substantially reduce your typing time because you will no longer have to look down at your keyboard to locate “C” or to find the shortcut “Ctrl+X”.

Ultimate Typing™ is a program that will help you pay off your typing time debt and help you increase your typing time assets. Over the years, you will save hundreds of hours of typing, just by committing yourself to improving this one skill today.

Time Asset: Reading – How to Cut Down on Reading Time

We read for work, for pleasure, for education, for keeping up with the world. One time asset you should be looking at investing in is reading. Reading efficiently means you can stay on top of developments and new knowledge, and you can be more efficient at any reading-related project, from doing research for a report, to putting together a white paper for a new software release from your company.

By improving your reading speed you will be able to save hundreds of reading hours because bad habits like sub-vocalization and regression won’t be slowing you down. Consider how 7 Speed Reading™ might be the key to improving your productivity, today and for as long as you live.

Time Asset: Language  – Minimize your Language Time Debt

If your spelling and vocabulary are poor, then your productivity more than likely suffers from it. A person with an extended vocabulary and excellent spelling skill is more efficient at writing.

eReflect’s user-friendly software products Ultimate Spelling™ and Ultimate Vocabulary™ help you improve on these two seminal language skills. When you master these skills, you won’t have to rely on thesauruses, dictionaries, and spellcheckers every time you put together a report or have to write your next pitch.

Time as Asset is an excellent way to conceptualize productivity. It takes into consideration a valuable aspect of productivity: that productivity is  an ongoing goal we must think of  as a continuum, rather than a one-time thing we conquer one task at a time.

The apostrophe has two main functions.

The first is to show omission of letters and the second is to show possession, which is what we’ll look at here.

Using the apostrophe to indicate possession

It’s easy when you write about the dog’s dinner; the man’s stunningly beautiful wife, Lavinia; Lavinia’s personal trainer, Lars, and so on.

It starts to get tricky (for Lavinia’s husband and for us) when we get to Lars. Is Lavinia Lars’ best client? Could it be that she is Lars’s ticket to that new Porsche he’s had his eye on for some time?

If he was plain old Bill there wouldn’t be a problem — she would be Bill’s best client and the ticket to Bill’s new Porsche.

We’ll assume (rightly, as it happens) that Lavinia is a Lady Who Lunches, and when she does lunch with her friends, they visit a women’s club. It’s not a womens’ club. When a word is made plural by changing some of its interior bits, you don’t make it doubly plural in the possessive.

When a word ends in ‘s’ and an additional syllable is pronounced in the possessive, add apostrophe S (even if you end up with 3 s’s). So you’d have the ladies going to their tennis class before lunch, and Lavinia being very chuffed when her coach, Mr Harris, told her she was the class’s best player. Although it’s difficult to know whether Mr Harris’s opinion is very reliable — he’s a push-over for a pretty face and a flash of a shapely thigh.

When writing about joint ownership, possession is shown only on the last noun, but where individual ownership exists, possession is shown on each noun.

Lavinia and her husband’s new yacht was the venue for a fancy-dress party.

Lavinia’s and Raoul’s sailor suits were a hit with their guests.

T’riffic Tip

The very best way to remember when to use the possessive apostrophe — in any circumstance — is to substitute the word ‘of’ …

The women’s club – the club of the women

Lavinia’s personal trainer – the personal trainer of Lavinia

Her husband’s new yacht – the yacht of her husband

This is also the way you test for those really tricky ones:

three months’ experience – the experience of three months

So, if you’re tempted to use an apostrophe but you can’t substitute “of” … then leave it out!

Banana’s only $2 kilo – the … of … bananas, kilos? … @#!

All these shop’s sell clothes – the … of … shops, clothes? … @#!

OK … you get the message. Don’t just whack in an apostrophe every time you end a word with S!

About the Author: Jennifer Stewart is a freelance writer whose site, http://www.write101.com has been helping people solve their writing problems since 1998. Visit now to read numerous articles on how to write well — for profit or pleasure — and sign up for your free Writing Tips: mailto: WritingTips [email protected]

People make mistakes – especially in spelling. We should make sure we are not going to announce it in public though.

Here are some of the hysterical spelling mistakes you will see roaming around the streets during protests. Get ready to LAUGH OUT LOUD!

Hungry For A Steak or A Mistake?

Talking About Competence

Let’s Make It Official Then

Oh No! Not in PUBLIC

Really Confused Here

The Lack Of Space

Vandalize, You Say?

Kindly Put The Letter G To Complete Washington

Arithmetic Is Really Hard

Pardon Me?

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Do u lk 2 type like ths? The world is divided between those who say texting – and for that matter, any other technological innovation – add to the devolution and degradation of language, and others who assert that language is always evolving, even if that means using abbreviations or slang.

What people on both sides of the debate generally don’t realize is that texting can actually be used for improving phonological awareness and performance. What this means is that your phonological skills – your ability to spell words correctly – have to already be fairly high in order for you to be able to abbreviate words for use in texting or tweeting. Therefore, texting a message like “2nite @ Ben’s home 4 T” presupposes a phonological awareness of these words and their sound and letter patterns. A non-native speaker of English probably won’t be able to decipher this sentence because of this phonological knowledge gap that would allow them to match the abbreviations to the corresponding intended words that make up the sentence, “Tonight at Ben’s home for tea.”

A recent study by Coventry University has shown the proof of this phenomenon: that “textisms” improve children’s reading and writing skills. So instead of looking at texting as the death of language, it is more constructive to see it as a skill that improves a student’s phonological awareness. In other words, texting not only doesn’t damage people’s spelling skills, it improves them.

As students send out text after text, they’re constantly using the spelling and phonological rules that permeate language in order to create meaningful and generally applicable and intelligible abbreviations. While texting won’t be taught in language arts classes any time soon, it shouldn’t be condemned outright as something that causes language skills to decay, or worse, encourages illiteracy. Texting has a robust set of rules. Coming up with new textisms and other abbreviations requires advanced linguistic skills and creativity. Like all other aspects of English, they are based on a person’s basic knowledge of phonology, spelling. and even grammar.

People do argue that texting and tweeting using initialisms and the shorthand widely used on social media will ultimately make people forget how to properly spell words in formal contexts, but this argument loses sight of the mechanisms at work behind texting. This new form of English is still decidedly grounded in the same principles as the non-abbreviated language format, and due to its popularity it deserves study and support, not merely criticism.

Cross-posted on the Ultimate Spelling blog.

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You may already know that the word “pants” means something else entirely in British English (hint: it doesn’t mean “trousers”), but do you know about the words that both British and American English speakers use, yet spell differently?

A basic rule of the thumb that covers these words is that American English spelling tends to be simplified and pronunciation-based. While British English favors the spelling of words as they originally appeared in the language they’ve been borrowed from – for instance, the word “cheque” – American English spellers generally write the word as they sound it out: “check.”

Writers, exchange students, and businessmen and businesswomen need to be aware of these spelling differences when dealing with people in Britain and the US, because using the proper spelling for each country helps avoid confusion, and also lends that touch of professionalism that marks a true global citizen.

Here are the main spelling differences between American and British spelling of English words.

-er/re

Words that end in –re in Britain often have those two letters reversed when spelled in American English. Here are some examples:

British English

centre, fibre, litre, theatre

American English

center, fiber, liter, theater

-nse/nce

While the British use the –nce ending, Americans generally prefer –nse.

American English

defense, license, offense, pretense

British English

defence, licence, offence, pretence

-ize/ise

American English uses the –ize spelling at the end of words, and while some people in Britain accept that as a valid spelling, you’ll usually see those same words spelled with the  –ise ending instead.

British English

apologise, organise, recognise

American English

apologize, organize, recognize

-or/-our

In British English, the preferred spelling of words ending in –our is not maintained in American English; in the United States, the “u” is dropped from the word.

American English

behavior, color, humor, labor, neighbor, flavor

British English

behaviour, colour, humour, labour, neighbour, flavour

Double vowels “ae” and “oe”

While the British retain the more complex spelling of words with Greek or Latin roots, using the orthodox spelling that was established when those words were brought into the English language as far back as the 14th and 15th centuries, the Americans, as usual, like their terminology simplified.

American English

leukemia

maneuver

estrogen

pediatric

British English

leukaemia

manoeuvre

oestrogen

paediatric

Words ending in a vowel plus –l

While Americans have dropped the double “l” when adding suffixes to verbs that end in the letter “l” the British still generally use the two-“l” approach to their spelling.

American English

traveling

traveled

traveler

fueled

fueling

British English

travelling

travelled

traveller

fuelled

fuelling

The rules can be confusing, especially for people who are learning English as a second language. Which system you choose often depends on where you’re learning English. Obviously, if you’re learning English in the United States, you will be taught that orthography, but if you are learning English in India, you will generally be taught the British spelling. Wherever you are, keep in mind that more often than not, the American spelling of words is a simplified version that is closer to how a word sounds rather how it was spelled in the language it has been borrowed from.

Knowing the spelling rules and differences will help you learn the spelling exceptions, too. For instance, archaeology is a spelling that’s used by English teachers and scientists in both American and British universities. Keep digging around, and you’ll find more exceptions – and that’s a hard and fast rule.

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Unless you’re a ferociously passionate language user, chances are you’ve used a similar sounding word instead of the appropriate one, and more than once. How many times in the last week did  your Word editor flagged your errors when you confused “its” and “it’s” or “their” and “there”? Worse, what if your computer editor didn’t catch them at all?

What is a homophone?

A homophone is a word that is pronounced the same way as another word, but has a different meaning. This means that words like “to”, “two”, and “too” are homophones. We pronounce them the same, yet their meanings are completely different.

It’s not just simple words that get confused. The words “queue” and “cue” have a different spelling and meaning, but they too can be confused when you’re touch typing quickly and you’re already deep into your post-snack afternoon slump.

Why so much hate on homophones?

The English language has borrowed words from so many languages and cultures that it has become a very confusing and often unpredictable language to learn. “Tea” and “tee” are semantically different, but it’s unbelievably easy to swap one for the other in writing.

This is why people can get upset when homophones cause them problems. Homophones are little language bandits that steal away your thunder. Your writing will never be flawless because they’re bound to ruin it, you think. The thing is they’re embarrassingly good at it – but you can be better.

How to master homophone usage

The only foolproof solution to ban homophone misuse from your writing once and for all is to improve your writing skills.

Homophones, as we said above, are little bandits that wait for exhaustion to kick in to make their move and sneak into your writing. This means the best thing you can do is to equip yourself with the linguistic knowledge you  need to avoid them, or at least spot them when they creep in.

• Revisit your elementary school years and practice your spelling and vocabulary skills. There’s no shame in trying to become a competent language user, no matter how old you are.

• When learning new words, ensure you master both their spelling and their meaning.

• It’s not enough to know how a word is pronounced, because chances are you’re going to confuse “keys” with “quays” at some point.

• By properly learning a word’s orthography and meaning you are instantly minimizing the chances of confusing homophones in your writing. This will ensure that you avoid the always-awkward situation of having to explain yourself to your editor or manager. Yikes.

• Practice your language skills with spelling games and even with spelling software. Good software will help you brush up on your language skills and give you a the tools you need to write clearly and proofread your writing afterward. Remember, “Ceiling the deal” is not an acceptable phrase any way you look at it.

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