spelling rules

Although i have little doubt that someone will show up to adduce a source for authority in English orthography, i submit to you that the answers are likely unavailable or of dubious value.

There are so many exceptions to grammatical and spelling rules in English, that even bright children who are native anglophones have difficulty in learning the "rules" of spelling. Spelling has changed greatly over centuries, and even noticably within short spaces of time--Noah Webster decided to change spellings for American children: colour became color, centre became center, humour became humor; more than just a few of the changes he made have come to be accepted throughout the English-speaking world, such as music and magic rather than the old forms, musick and magick.

Unfortunately, i would suggest that you are better off to simply learn the spellings of words, learn as many of the "rules" as you can, as well as the exceptions, and never right in the English language without ready access to a dictionary. I've been literate in English for more than fifty years, and without counting simple typographical errors, i constantly misspell words.

Good luck, and come back to talk to us often. I hope others will stop by with something more useful to offer you.

Oh, i will point out that in the word "panicking," the "k" is required, because otherwise a "c" preceding an "i" would become "soft." The letter "c" before "a," "o" and "u" is hard (pronounced like a "k")--cat, coat, cut; before "e" and "i," the letter "c" is soft (pronounced like an "s")--center, city.

This is equally true of the letter "g"--hard "g" as in gate, got, gut, soft "g" as in gestate, ginger (Oooo that's fun--ginger has both examples of a soft "g"). So, for example, the word guide has a silent "u" before the "i" so that the "g" is pronounced as a hard "g."

If English spelling made any sense, this stuff wouldn't be taught in schools. In most other languages, once you know how to read and write, it's unlikely you'll ever misspell anything -- written transcription of speech tends to be phonetic. Not so in English. There are a dozen exceptions to every rule, and most of the rules make little sense to begin with. As Setanta has already said, all you can do is learn it. Don't look for too much logic.

I submit that expenditure, mixture and apologetic [is there any such word as [apologetical"?] are all spelt with a T because there is a T sound in them, just as editorial has a second I because it has a second I sound!

Why the words are formed in this way from the root noun is another matter entirely; but as spellings these all seem quite logical to me.

It would seem, at first glance, that for languages that use syllabaries, spelling would be a piece of cake. In fact, as MA pointed out mispelling a word is impossible. One sound is represented by one 'symbol'.

But nothing's ever that easy. Japanese has two syllabaries. Both use different though similar symbols for identical sounds. Why two? One syllabary, Katakana, is used for foreign words and the other, Hiragana, is used for Japanese words.

Sounds simple enough, they're easy to memorize, read and write and Japanese kids don't even have a conception of what a spelling test is? A spelling test, how ludicrous! Wow, I wanna use that kind of system!

Hold the phone. Because of their early contact with China, the Japanese introduced Chinese logograms. These are the third part of the Japanese writing system, Kanji. What started out as easy, becomes exponentially more difficult. Japanese kids have Kanji practice and Kanji tests. The same drudgery is there, it's just been shifted.

In order to function as a literate adult, about 2000+ Kanji are necessary. These "pictographs", IMHO, are much harder to keep in memory than spellings.