📏 10 spelling rules every kid should know

1. 1

   Drop the silent e before -ing and -ed

   make → making, hope → hoped, ride → riding. Keep it when the suffix starts with a consonant: hope → hopeful.

2. 2

   Double the last letter after a short vowel

   hop → hopping, run → runner, big → biggest. One short vowel, one final consonant, a suffix that starts with a vowel: double it.

3. 3

   Change y to i before most suffixes

   happy → happiness, cry → cried, baby → babies. But keep the y before -ing: cry → crying, so you never get two i's in a row.

4. 4

   Add -es after s, x, z, ch and sh

   box → boxes, wish → wishes, bus → buses. You can hear the extra syllable: say "boxes" out loud.

5. 5

   Many words ending in f change to -ves

   leaf → leaves, wolf → wolves, half → halves. Not all: roof → roofs, chief → chiefs. Learn the common ones.

6. 6

   C is soft before e, i and y

   cent, city, cycle say /s/; cat, cot, cut say /k/. The same goes for g, most of the time: gem, giant, gym.

7. 7

   Use -ck right after a short vowel

   back, duck, sick, rock. After a long vowel or a consonant, it's just k: bake, milk, park.

8. 8

   Q is almost always followed by u

   queen, quick, quiet, question. The exceptions are rare words and names from other languages.

9. 9

   English words hardly ever end in v

   have, give, love, live, glove: they add a silent e. If a word seems to end in v, it almost always needs that e.

10. 10

    I before e, except after c (mostly)

    believe, field, piece; receive, ceiling, deceive. Also ei when it says "ay": neighbor, weigh. Exceptions to learn by heart: weird, seize, their, science.

Peabody's choice of the rules that cover the most words, ranked by how often a child meets them. Four link to Peabody word lists for practice. Checked 6 November 2026.

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These are Peabody's own words, built from our grade word banks. They are not the Scripps School Spelling Bee Study List, which belongs to Scripps and is given to enrolled schools. Have the school's sheet? Ask the teacher; schools get it from Scripps at spellingbee.com. Checked 31 October 2026 · Free, no account, nothing you do here leaves this device · v0.2.0