As a non-native speaker and before the advent of the panaceas called spell-checkers and auto-correct, I used to often misspell words like receive ( as "recieve") and achieve (as "acheive").
I still make the mistake sometimes and thanks to auto-correct/in-built spell checkers in browsers, I am never able to get a hang of which spelling to use when!
Is there any easy way to remember when to put 'i' before 'e' (as in "believe", "relief" etc.) and when to put 'i' after 'e' (receive, receipt, deceit, and so on)?
Best Answer
The usual mnemonic in English to remember the ruling for this is represented by a fairly simple poem:
Of course, as with any rule there are some exceptions: the most notable ones are either, neither, inveigle and seize. Unfortunately there isn't a cast-iron procedure for determining what's an exception and what isn't, though the most common cause of an exception is when the word has a long 'e' sound.