"I before E, except after C<!--do not add the "neighbor or weigh" extension here; it is discussed further on in the article.-->" is a mnemonic rule of thumb for English spelling. If one is unsure whether a word is spelled with the digraph or , the rhyme suggests that the correct order is unless the preceding letter is , in which case it may be .
The rhyme is very well known; Edward Carney calls it "this supreme, and for many people solitary, spelling rule". sound (the lexical sets of FACE and perhaps SQUARE ). This is commonly expressed by continuing the rhyme "or when sounding like A, as in neighbor or weigh".
- including only cases where the spelling represents the "long e"
Early Modern English spelling was not fixed; many words were spelled with and interchangeably, in printed works of the 17th century and private correspondence of educated people into the 19th century.
History of the mnemonic
The mnemonic (in its short form) is found as early as 1866, as a footnote in Manual of English Spelling, edited by schools inspector James Stuart Laurie from the work of a Tavistock schoolmaster named Marshall. Michael Quinion surmises the rhyme was already established before this date. others in 1855 and 1862 use different rhymes. Many textbooks from the 1870s on use the same rhyme as Laurie's book. Mark Wainwright's FAQ posting on the alt.usage.English newsgroup characterises this restricted version as British. The restriction may be implicit, or may be explicitly included as an extra line such as "when the sound is e" placed before
<blockquote><poem>The following rhymes contain the substance of the last three rules:—
:i before e,
:Except after c,
:Or when sounded as "a",
:As in neighbor and weigh
:But seizure and seize do what they please.</poem></blockquote>
"Dr Brewer" is credited as the author by subsequent writers quoting this form of the rhyme, which became common in American schools. The entry was retained in Ernest Gowers's 1965 revision. Robert Burchfield rewrote it for the 1996 edition, stating 'the rule can helpfully be extended "except when the word is pronounced with "', and giving a longer list of exceptions, including words excluded from Fowler's interpretation. Robert Allen's 2008 pocket edition states, "The traditional spelling rule ' i before e except after c ' should be extended to include the statement 'when the combination is pronounced -ee- . Jeremy Butterfield's 2015 edition suggests both "when ... pronounced -ee-" and "except when ... pronounced -ay-" as extensions to the rhyme, as well as listing various classes of exception.
In 1932 Leonard B. Wheat examined the rules and word lists found in various American elementary school spelling books. He calculated that, of the 3,876 words listed, 128 had ei or ie in the spelling; of these, 83 conformed to I-before-E, 6 to except-after-C, and 12 to sounded-like-A. He found 14 words with i-e in separate syllables, and 2 with e-i in separate syllables. This left 11 "irregular" words: 3 with cie (ancient, conscience, efficiency) and 8 with ei (either, foreign, foreigner, height, leisure, neither, seize, their). Wheat concluded, "If it were not for the fact that the jingle of the rule makes it easy to remember (although not necessarily easy to apply), the writer would recommend that the rule be reduced to '<!-- -->I usually comes before e,' or that it be discarded entirely".
Modern views
Sandra Wilde in 1990 claimed the sounded-like-E version of the rule was one of only two sound–letter correspondence rules worth teaching in elementary schools.