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I before E except after C

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"I before e, except after c" is a mnemonic device used to help students remember how to spell certain words in the English language. It means that, in words where i and e fall together, the order is ie, except directly following c, when it is ei. For example:

ie in words like siege, friend
ei in words like ceiling, receive

However, in its short form the rule has many common exceptions, such as species, science, sufficient (where ie follows c) or seize, weird, vein, kaleidoscope and neighbour (where ei is not preceded by c). More exceptions are listed below. Various augmentations to the rhyme have been proposed to handle these exceptions.

Note: This page or section contains IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. See Help:IPA for a pronunciation key.

1 American version
2 British version
3 Exceptions
- 3.1 cie
- 3.2 ei not preceded by c
4 Cultural references
5 See also
6 External links

American version

An augmented American version is:

i before e

except after c

or when sounding like a

as in neighbor and weigh

(Here a is [eɪ].) This includes many of the exceptions but still fails to correctly handle many others, such as protein or weird.

British version

A British version is:

when the sound is ee

it's i before e

except after c

(Here ee is [iː].) This excludes most exceptions, as well as excluding some words (e.g. friend) which are correctly handled by the American version. The most frequent everyday failures of the British form of the rule are seize, caffeine, protein (here -ein(e) was originally pronounced [iː.ɪn]) and, for those who pronounce the initial vowel sound [iː], either and neither. Weird and weir are often listed as exceptions, though the pronunciation of -eir in Received Pronunciation is [ɪə(ɹ)] rather than [iː(ɹ)]. Inflections of words ending -cy (fancied, policies etc.) are exceptions for those with happY tensing accents, who pronounce the -cies/-cied endings [siz]/[sid]/rather than [sɪz]/[sɪd]. Few common words have the cei spelling handled by the rule: verbs ending -ceive and their derivatives (perceive, deceit, transceiver, receipts, etc), and ceiling. Many words spelled with ei are pronounced [iː] in America but not Britain (e.g. sheikh, leisure, either have [eɪ], [ɛ], [aɪ] respectively). In these cases, the British pronunciation is a corollary of the British rule (i.e. when spelt ei, the pronunciation cannot be [iː]).

Exceptions

This section lists exceptions to the basic form; many will not be exceptions to the augmented forms. The word oneiromancies (studies into the meaning of dreams) breaks the rule twice, in both ways. The words deficiencies, efficiencies, sufficiencies, zeitgeist and einsteinium break the rule twice in the same way.

cie

Some groups of words have cie:

Inflections of words ending -cy (fancied, policies, etc.)
science and related words (conscience, prescient, etc.)
Other words ending -cient -ciency (ancient,efficiency, etc.)
Suffixes -ier or -iety after a root ending in -c (financier, glacier, society, etc.)

ei not preceded by c

Some groups of words have ei:

Chemical names ending in -ein or -eine (caffeine, casein, codeine, phenolphthalein, phthalein, protein, etc.)
Many proper names (Keira, Breidi, Keith, Leith, Neill, Sheila, etc.)
Scottish English words (deil, deid, weill, etc.)
Prefixes de- or re- before words starting with i (deindustrialize, reignite, etc.)
Inflection -ing after verbs those ending in e which do not drop the e (being, seeing, swingeing, etc.)

Miscellaneous others: in the following lists, words are grouped by the sound corresponding to ei in the spelling. An asterisk* after a word indicates the pronunciation implied is one of several found. Most derived forms are omitted; for example, as well as seize, there exists disseize and seizure.

[eɪ]: these exceptions are excluded by the American version: beige, cleidoic, deign, dreidel, eight, feign, feint, freight, geisha, gleization, gneiss, greige, greisen, heigh-ho*, heinous*, inveigle*, neigh, neighbo(u)r, obeisance*, peignoir*, reign, rein, seiche, seidel, seine, sheikh*, sleigh, surveillance, veil, vein, weigh
eir as [ɛɹ] (rhotic) or [ɛə(ɹ)] (non-rhotic): these exceptions are excluded by the American version: heir, their
[i]: these exceptions are the only ones that slip through the strictest interpretation of the British version: either*, heinous*, inveigle*, keister, leisure*, monteith, neither*, obeisance*, seize, seizin, sheikh*, specie, teiid
[i] or [ɪ], depending on happy tensing: these exceptions may slip through the British version: species
eir as [ɪɹ] (rhotic) or [ɪə(ɹ)] (non-rhotic): these exceptions may slip through the British version: weir, weird
[aɪ]: eider, either*, einsteinium, feisty, heigh-ho*, height, heist, kaleidoscope, leitmotiv, neither*, Rotweiller, seismic, stein, zeitgeist
[ɪ]: counterfeit, forfeit, surfeit
[ɪ] or [ə], depending on weak vowel merger: foreign, reveille*, sovereign
[ɛ]: heifer, leisure*, peignoir*
[æ]: reveille*
e and i in separate segments: albeit, atheism, deify, deity, onomatopoeia

Cultural references

"I Before E Except After C" was a song Charlie Brown and Linus sing, with Snoopy playing a jaw harp, to prepare Charlie for his school's spelling bee in A Boy Named Charlie Brown. The song covered several other spelling rules, e.g., words ending in -cede, -ceed and -sede. The "I before E" rule was debated in a Canadian TV commercial for the Hyundai Santa Fe. Brian Regan mentions the rule in his observational humor. When asked what the "I before E rule" is, he jokingly responds "I before E...always." His teacher then corrects him with a rule that makes about as much sense as the real rule: "I before e except after c, or when sounding like ay as in neighbor or weigh, and on weekends, and holidays, and all throughout May, and you'll always be wrong, no matter what you say!" Regan responds with a simple, "Oh. That's a hard rule." In The Simpsons episode "I'm Spelling as Fast as I Can", Marge and Lisa discuss the rule:

Marge: Remember: "I before E except after C."

Lisa: Except as an A as in "neighbor" and "weigh".

Marge: What about "Jim Nabors is way cool?"

Lisa: When will that ever come up?

Marge: It's on my apron!

In the TaleSpin episode "Vowel Play", Baloo and Kit were skywriting the word "weight" but misspelled it because Kit used the rhyme "I before E except after C". Afterwards, Kit realized his mistake when he remembered the rest of the rhyme, "...and when sounding like A as in 'neighbor' or 'weigh'". In a recent broadcast of David Letterman Show, Jim Carrey made an impression of David Caruso as an English teacher, referencing the rule. "i before e (except after c)" is a book written by Judy Parkinson. The book, as stated on the front cover, is full of "old-school ways to remember stuff".