Take a look at the following English words: butcher, squirrel, mortgage, and choir. Does something seem off about them? At one point in time, the words move and love rhymed. So did blood, good, and ...

Tear in eye your dress you’ll tear. So shall I! Oh, hear my prayer, Pray, console your loving poet, Make my coat look new, dear, sew it? Just compare heart, beard and heard, Dies and diet, lord and ...

If you're a kid learning how to write, or an adult speaker of a language with sensible spelling, English spelling can seem like a cruel prank. And even if you're a completely literate adult native ...

The English language is notorious for complex spelling rules—and the many words that break them. We all know i comes before e, except, of course, in certain weird words like, well, weird. We pronounce ...

In the day and age that we live in, proper English spelling and grammar seem to have taken a backseat for students. With internet lingo and texting ruling the hearts and minds of youngsters, learning ...

Johnny in Topeka can’t read, but Janne in Helsinki is effortlessly finishing his storybooks. Such a disparity may be expected by now, but the reason might come as a surprise: It probably has much less ...

Trying to change the spelling of complex words in English won’t improve literacy rates. Wendy/Flickr, CC BY-SA My 11-year-old student sighs. How can the same letters make so many different sounds? We ...