Help me remember how to spell the word 'separate'

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

There’s a lot of words in english that, growing up, you learn how to spell using some kind of trick. My teacher back in elementary school used to say that in order to remember how to spell ‘friend’, it’s ‘fri-end’. ‘Principal’ is the person because the principal is your ‘pal’. And of course there’s the classic “i before e except after c”

But for the life of me, I can’t seem to remember the difference between ‘seperate’ and ‘separate’. They both look correct! I use both regularly, sometimes without even noticing. I would go days sometimes when I’m certain that it’s ‘sepErate’. Help me remember how to spell this word please!

2

“A” and “E” are separate grades.

3

I had the same problem, and what worked for me was thinking of the word pare. When you pare an apple, for example, you separate the skin from the rest of the fruit. And dictionary.com tells me that both words ultimately come from the same Latin root.

4

I always think of it as there is an “r” separating the double a’s, as in sep-a-r-a-te

5

Another point is the similarity to disparate. Disparate things are, in a sense, separate from each other. You might then ask “but how do I remember how to spell ‘disparate’?”, but somehow I never had a problem with that word.

6

I actually learned a trick here for spelling ‘separate’. It doesn’t make any sense but it worked for me: ‘sep’ (pretend sep means to do something) a rat (rodent) e.

Sep a rat e. The trick is to remember that there’s a rat in the middle.

7

The "e"s near both ends are separated by "a"s in the middle.

8

This.

My fourth grade teacher, Mrs. Tubbs gave me that advice and it has stuck with me.

“Remember, there is always ‘a rat’ in sep a rat e.”

9

Use your spell checker to separate the good spellings from the bad.

10

se(e) Pa rate (doesn’t work well as a visual, but say it aloud)

11

Two a’s, two e’s. A’s in the middle, e’s on the ends.

12

This is how I learned it.

13

That is what I was taught and it works well.

14

Yes, the vowels are symmetrical: E-A-A-E. And they are “separated” by the consonants.

15

I do something similar - I think to myself that there’s a pair in separate. Obviously there’s no, but I know that already, so it works.

The best spelling hint I’ve ever heard is to spell onomatopoeia by sounding it out to the first bit of ‘Old McDonald Had a Farm.’

16

There’s a rat in the middle. That’s how I’ve always remembered it.

17

I read a thing about mnemonic devices when I was like 8 that has stayed with me all these years, so they obviously work. One was for “separate”. It was a visual of the word, with big letters made of stone. The A in question was thrust up like a volcano, separating the two halves of the word, with the other letters sort of tumbling down away from it.

From the same thing: a cartoon of two people saying “WE are not WEird!”

I wish I could remember what thing this was I read. No device for that…

18

I am a writer and editor in real life, so I am qualified to give advice here. Finally a thread where I can do that! :smiley:

I find it helps me to say the words improperly, but as they’re spelled, when I’m writing. I make sure I pronounce it /sepUHrayte/ to myself as I’m typing. Same with /austraLEEuh/ (Australia) and /SIMeyelahr/ (similar) and such.

It also helps that I’m a goof in real life so when I walk around saying “I’m going to /austraLEEuh/ on vacation” people don’t look at me like this :dubious: TOO much.

19

From the Alice and Jerry book of my youth: “Caught like a rat in a trap.” Separate always has “a rat” in it.

20

I have trouble with the word seperate as well. The good news is you don’t need to know how to spell it anymore now that you posted this thread. Simply log into any computer or smart phone, go to http://boards.straightdope.com ,log in, and do a an Advanced search under your user name for threads that you have started. Threads are sorted by date so just remember you posted this around the time of the Mississippi floods, the Royal Wedding, or close enough to the Japanese tsunami (all of those dates are easy to find via google if you have trouble remembering those for reference years from now). Just read the thread again, cut and paste into whatever you are working on and viola! Problem solved.