What’s the best spelling rule for “ie” vs “ei”?

Factual Questions
21

[QUOTE=ultrafilter]
Neither leisured foreign counterfeiter could attain either weird height without forfeitting protein.
[/QUOTE]

Gah! I forgot foreign, forfeit, either, and protein. But I remembered surfeit? :confused:

Another … sovereign.

Okay, okay … so we’ve blown past ten. Maybe less than 25 common words? Former Marine Guy’s list is cool reading, but contains a lot of rare words.

The words in this sentence actually fit the rule for me, due to the “sounded as a” exception in the version I always heard.

22

I learned it as:

I before E, except after C, or when sounding like A, as in neighbor and weigh. What a weird society!

23

Wikipedia speaks.

24

I learned it as “i before e except after c, when the sound is ee”

That deals nicely with many of the exceptions.

25

Seriously, we’re this far into the thread, and nobody has mentioned “their”?

26

[QUOTE=1920s Style “Death Ray”]
I learned it as “i before e except after c, when the sound is ee”

That deals nicely with many of the exceptions.
[/QUOTE]

Ditto, except for the caveat - the version I learnt was

’ i before e except after c, if it rhymes with ee ’

Interestingly I only heard the caveat from a friend when I was at Uni, he went to a very competent school - Winchester.

27

“I before e except after c or when sounded as a as in ‘neighbor’ and ‘weigh,’ or weekends or holidays or all throughout May, and you’ll always be wrong no matter what you say!"

28

Glacier, although I normally knew how to spell it, got me kicked out of the state spelling bee once, because I went with the rule. :frowning:

29

[QUOTE=Shecky]
“I before e except after c or when sounded as a as in ‘neighbor’ and ‘weigh,’ or weekends or holidays or all throughout May, and you’ll always be wrong no matter what you say!"
[/QUOTE]

Brian Regan!

I was going to quote this as well!

:stuck_out_tongue:

30

[QUOTE=jebert]
Yeah, I know I can look it up in a dictionary or use spell check, but sometimes those things aren’t available. (Unless I’m missing something, I don’t see a spell checker in this SDMB reply window I’m using.)

The rule I’m trying to remember was in my English III textbook, which was maybe 5" x 7" in size and had a picture of a printer’s typecase on the cover. In fact our school used the complete series of these books for the four years of English. The covers were identical except for the color of the square that the title was printed in.

Anyone remember those books?
[/QUOTE]

Firefox with the spellchecker enabled.