Editor's Corner

The other day, I reminded someone of the “i before e” rule, and then today received this funny sentence:

“I before e except when you run a feisty heist on a weird beige foreign neighbor.” (Thank you, Mr. Wilms!)

I’ve included some of the exceptions here, from an article on Wikipedia. If you are interested in the specific groupings of the words by sound, root words, and more, see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_before_E_except_after_C

Exceptions

cie

· ancient

· bouncier

· conscience

· deficiencies

· efficiencies

· fancied

· fancier

· financier

· glacier

· policies

· prescient

· proficiencies

· science

· society

· species

ei not preceded by c

· atheism

· beige

· caffeine

· casein

· codeine

· counterfeit

· deify

· deign

· deindustrialize

· deity

· eider

· eight

· either

· feign

· feint

· feisty

· foreign

· foreign

· forfeit

· freight

· geisha

· height

· heinous

· herein

· inveigh

· inveigle

· kaleidoscope

· keister

· neigh

· neighbor

· nonpareil

· obeisance

· onomatopoeia

· peignoir

· protein

· reign

· rein

· seismic

· sheikh

· skein

· sleigh

· sleight

· sovereign

· stein

· surfeit

· surveil

· their

· unveil

· veil

· vein

· weigh

· weight

· weird

· zeitgeist

· Many proper names, often because they are adopted from other languages

o Keith, Neil, Sheila, Stein, etc.

o Leith, Keighley, Rheims, Raleigh, etc.

o Rottweiler, Cassiopeia

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