Good morning, Internet
I’ve noticed that quite often, you’re terrible at spelling. Sometimes I’m bad at spelling too, but 99% of the time, that’s because I typed too quickly and/or didn’t proofread my work. I’m thinking that you just don’t have a hot clue when it comes to putting letters in the correct order.
So every once in a while, I’m going to go over a word that you get wrong very consistently, because they bother me so very much.
The first word I want to teach you is Definitely. This is a tough one, and I’ve come to the conclusion that not a single person in the world besides myself knows how to spell it correctly.
I’ve seen it misspelt in many different ways, but never the correct one. Definately, definetly, defiantly, dafinetely. I could list examples until the cows come home, but I feel like it would be more productive to simply give you a tip on how to get it right.
Definitely has a lot of consonants. If you sound the word out, they’re all pretty easy to pick out and get correctly. It’s the vowels that are usually the focal point of misspellings. Here’s the trick: there are four vowels in definitely; in order they are E, I, I, and E (we’ll consider that pesky Y a consonant for now). If you look closely, you’ll notice that the consonants form a palindrome!
So all you have to do to get definitely right is to remember that short sequence of vowels, E-I-I-E, and then sound out the consonants all around them. It’s helpful to note that the word is also built in a consonant-vowel-consonant-vowel pattern (and for this purpose, Y is a vowel).
Alright, Internet, you’re now equipped to go out there and spell definitely correctly! Go out onto the message boards and YouTube comments and Twitter to wow your friends with your fancy new spelling ability!
I hope you’ve enjoyed your lesson as much as I did teaching it. Tune in later for more helpful spelling tricks!