They don’t have to make sense, they just have to work.
Here are a couple of mine:
where does the* u *go in restaurant = “Do not RANT in the restaurant.”
where are the double consonants in Caribbean = “my CAR is a** B**aked Bean.”
Just curious if others do likewise.
One I read in a snarky column in The Stranger in the late nineties, for “millennium”:
Two Ns and two Ls, you spelled it quite well.
One L or one N, you’re a big fat stupid hen.
“My Neighbor Enjoys Making Odd Noises In Church”
The business man takes the bus.
I always mentally pronouce Wednesday as Wed-ness-day.
One I got from the 5th grade teacher: friends to the end.
From the Oatmeal: if you put an a in definitely, you’re definitely an a-hole.
Regarding the i before e rule, weird is weird.
The principal is your PAL.
Diarrhea, gonorrhea, etc. are Really Really Horrible.
Things I have to say to myself every time to spell these words correctly:
There’s a rat in separate.
Be - a - u - tiful
Tom or row
I also have to say Wed - ness - day. Also Feb - brew - ary (its Feb - you - ary in my Northern California accent).
When I was little we had a few for school.
A Rat In The House May Eat The Ice Cream = arithmetic
George Earl’s Oldest Girl Rode A Pig Home Yesterday = geography
Also for dessert/desert: the two s’s in dessert stand for strawberry shortcake
Yes, but myrrh is really really awesome (though gold is probably better).
Not sure if this counts…
I still have trouble with separate…
My method of memorizing the spelling of words is to over and/or mispronounce:
sep AR ate
Yeah, that’s how it’s spelled, but I pronounce it completely differently with different emPHASes on different sylLABles.
I remind myself the day was named of Odin, so d before n.
For me, it’s remembering para is in the middle of the word.
I also have to remind myself of the “i before e” rule every time I spell believe. For some reason, beleive looks more correct to me.
I have the box-set of TV Funhouse, so I should probably sit this one out.
For me, over-pronouncing (sounding out silent letters, replacing schwas with their stressed vowel counterparts, etc) is the usual method I use to memorize spellings, but every time I write “weird,” a mental asterisk leads me to the note that weird is weird when it comes to the “i before e…” rule.
Two C’s, one E, two S, and-that’s-how-you-spell-success
Also when I needed it for spelling assistant was always ass is tant-t.
Separate seems to be a toughie. My mnemonic for it is “two A’s separate two E’s.”
Another vote for “a rat” - separate.
No a’s are buried in a cemetery.
A horse has reins. (Free rein)
A kinG reiGns. (Both king and reign have a G in them, so those two are together.)
Phosphorus: who is the phos phor? Us! (ninth-graders always want to put “ou” in each syllable!)
There is no flour in fluorine!!
Weird is not wired.
I live in North Carolina and work in the sports biz, so correctly spelling the name of Duke basketball coach Mike Krzyzewski is a needed skill. I like to rehearse by pronouncing his name exactly as it looks: “ker-zy-zoo-ski.” Even though, as a Kentucky graduate, I find him loathsome (and sometimes indulge in daydreams where he wakes up one day and discovers that he wants to give up coaching basketball to become, oh, a chef or whatever), he still deserves to have his name spelled properly.
LIU: Look it up.
No other simple mnemonic is remotely useful. English spelling is capricious.