This is a continuation of a parent series on WRTR.
How do you tell princes from princess?
Let’s pause for a sec and talk about the /s/ sound. If you downloaded my sheet from last lesson, you know that there are common and uncommon ways to spell sounds. One thing that WRTR doesn’t really talk about is the letter S at the end of a word.
NO JOB E is often doing the job of keeping us straight on what is and is not PLURAL. Also, a bit of the FLOSSY pattern (r. 17) hops in there to help too. Without the double S, princess becomes princes. Without the double S, profess looks like a plural of “profe.” What’s a profe? Well, if you have a bunch of them, it’s profes, right? The same is true for “horse” “mouse” “goose” and a few others. Drop that “NO JOB” e and you have plural forms of what ever a hor, mou, or goo is: hors, mous, goos.
So when you’re talking about NO JOB e, you could point out that all of them aren’t totally shiftless.
It is what it is.
The following rules just are what they are. There’s not a lot to say about them.
#20 S almost never follows X.
When you have an X followed by a /s/ sound, it’s never an S. excited, excel, exit etc.
21 and 22 since are just the reverse of the FLOSSY pattern.
#21 When “all” is a multi syllable word, drop an L (because prefixes aren’t flossy)
#22 When “till” and full are suffixes, drop an L (because suffixes aren’t flossy)
Isn’t a Huge Fudge Batch better than just “Fudge”?
I really can’t believe that this rules comes SO LATE! And how come there’s no page?
#23 If you hear /j/ at the end of a SINGLE SYLLABLE word, directly after SHORT vowel, write DGE, otherwise use GE.
Without the red part, this would be the Fudge Rule. In my family, we add that last part, it becomes the Huge Fudge Rule. Since each of these either has an SECOND syllable or doesn’t come directly after a short vowel, that addition explains: image, gouge, page, large, language, huge.
Then next rule is imaginary. It SHOULD be in this section, but it’s not:
(Imaginary) If you hear /ch/ at the end of a SINGLE SYLLABLE word, directly after a SHORT vowel, write TCH.
The dyslexia teacher says that such, rich, much are rule-breaking SIGHT WORDS. I mean, look at all the words that end in TCH! So, though we don’t redact our spelling list, we do discuss the Huge Fudge Batch Rule when it comes up.
Third Suffix Rule: #24 Suffix Changing Rule
Remember our vowel-starting-suffix rules?
- DOUBLING
- DROPPING
- CHANGING
Now we are getting to number 3. CHANGING.
#24 when adding a suffix to consonant-y, change to I, unless it makes a double. For S use -ies.
Revisiting REVLOC
As I said earlier, I am IN LOVE with REVLOC syllables. Syllable types give me a checklist way to analyze the material. Let’s do it for Doubling, Dropping, Changing with a VOWEL suffix (ing, ed, etc.):
- R-controlled syllables = Double it (tar – tarring, stir – stirred)
- E-silent syllables (except job 4) = Drop it (bite – biting, rope – roped)
- V (Vowel teams) = Nothing (flee – fleeing, key – keyed)
- L-(Consonant L E, job 4) = Drop it (buckle – buckling, cuddle – cuddly)
- O-(Open) Check for Rule 24 “Y issue” (die – dying, happy – happiness)
- C- (Closed) Double it if it’s short and alone (hat – hatter, hit – hitting); do nothing if it has friends (wild – wilder, pink – pinking)