Even the FakeNews Washington Post (yeah, a stopped clock….yada, yada, yada) got this one right, “The ‘i before e, except after c’ rule is a giant lie.”
“I before E, except after C.”
The familiar grade school mnemonic is a “supreme, and for many people solitary, spelling rule,” linguist Edward Carney wrote in “A survey of English spelling.” Its primacy has been acknowledged in English grammar textbooks from 1866 (James Stuart Laurie’s “Manual of English Spelling,”) until the present day (Bryan Garner’s “Modern English Usage”).
But like many, many other rules in the English language, it turns out this one is built on a foundation of lies.
Thanks Anon in MT
