STORY: Why is English so hard to spell? There are clear differences between how words are written and how they are said. If English is your first language you may not realize it’s not that normal. In ...

English, whatever its merits as a language, is a bitch to spell. There are so many rules, and so many exceptions, and yet in the end you have to learn a lot of words on a case-by-case basis. If future ...

One of the best things going on around 200 B.C.E. (from this linguist’s point of view, at least) was that a librarian in Alexandria, Aristophanes of Byzantium, invented the first punctuation system ...

How can it be that “laughter” and “daughter” not only don’t rhyme but don’t sound remotely alike? What about “tomb,” “bomb,” and “comb”? Meanwhile, “liar” and “choir,” which couldn’t look more ...

Recently, the Scripps National Spelling Bee, held in Washington, DC, celebrated its centennial. Since 1925, children across our fair land have competed in classroom, school, and regional spelling bees ...

“The United States and Great Britain are two countries separated by a common language.” So goes the old chestnut commonly attributed to playwright George Bernard Shaw. One of those separations is in ...

Are you smarter than a spelling bee contestant? If you can spell these words, you might be. Merriam-Webster has announced the hardest words to spell in the English language ahead of the 92nd annual ...

For many Americans, spelling bees are a part of growing up in the United States. The challenge is obvious. From the moment kids begin to learn to read, there are clear differences between how words ...

In Enough is Enuf, writer Gabe Henry wittily and engagingly confronts all of these questions head-on and arrives at a surprising answer: We actually have tried, on many occasions across numerous ...