CHAPTER 6

The Silent e

One extremely useful feature of English spelling is the silent e. We place it at the end of a word in order

to change the sound of the preceding vowel and thus create a new word. For example, hat becomes hate,
spin becomes spine, etc. Not only does the silent e replace a vowel diphthong, but it also allows us to use
vowel combinations to produce still other words, for example, mete, meet, meat. Unfortunately, we tend
to overuse it, and sometimes there is confusion as to when to drop and when to retain the silent e. The
basic spelling rules are quite simple.

Spelling rule #1: Retain the silent e when a consonant suffix is added:

(^) Spelling rule #2: Drop the silent e when a vowel suffix is added:
(^) Spelling rule #3: The soft and hard c and g rules must be observed. Therefore, words that end in a
soft c or a soft g and are followed by a suffix that begins with a hard vowel or a consonant must
retain the silent e.
(^) Because of the large number of words that use the silent e, it is only to be expected that there might
appear to be numerous exceptions and anomalies. Most of these apparent anomalies fit into patterns and
obey the rules.
Spelling rule #4: The digraph dg is always considered soft, so the silent e is not needed when adding
suffixes:
(^) Spelling rule #5: There are very few commonly use English words that end in u; the ending is
usually ue. In almost every case, the silent e is dropped from these words when adding a suffix:
(^) Spelling rule #6: The silent e is retained in words that end in oe when adding the suffix ing:
(^) Spelling rule #7: When adding the suffix ing to words ending in ie, we drop the e and change the i to
y to avoid producing a double i:
(^) Note that at times, the pronunciation changes when a suffix is added and this causes a spelling change:
(^) But there are some words that do not follow the rules: