One of my spelling “bug-a-boos” is that I never can remember when/how to end a word in “ible” or “able”…
Availible or available, for instance…
Is there some kind of rule or guide beside rote memorization that can help me out?
Thanks
FML
There’s no doubt exceptions, though I’m vaguely braindead at the moment, and can’t think of any, but the rule of thumb is ‘able’ goes at the end if it’s just tacked onto the original word, ‘ible’ if there are other spelling changes.
Googling “ible able” gave me a great starting point. The rule I encountered most was full words get able and Latin roots get ible. So -able goes on the end of a full word, as in “acceptable”, “laughable”, and “believable” (note that the silent “e” gets dropped). And -ible follows Latin roots like “ed-” (for “eat”) and “cred-” (for believe), making “edible”, “credible”, “legible”, and “audible”.
Notable exceptions include:
* contemptible
* digestible
* flexible
* responsible
* irritable
* inevitable
“ible” if you’re tacking it onto a Latin root that’s from a verb, “able” if the root is a noun. Course, that’s not much help if you don’t know Latin.