Beautiful English Online

Bad spiller

Via Exploding Aardvark

No "Excetions"

Via Neatorama

Ye olde

When we see a quaint sign announcing Ye Olde Shoppe, we usually pronounce the "Ye" as yee. In fact, it was originally pronounced "the."

Anglo-Saxon (Old English) had two different letters for the "th" sounds: an eth for the th in that and a thorn for the th in thin .

eth
thorn

The eth died out in the 1300s, and the thorn was finally replaced by the th (called a diagraph)in the 1500s, by which time it had come to look very much like a y. People eventually forgot what the thorn meant and interpreted Ye (the) as Ye (ye) when they saw it on old signs.

And that is how The Olde Shoppe became Ye Olde Shoppe.

An Orthographic Lament by Charles Follen Adams

If an S and an I and an O and a U
With an X at the end spell Su;
And an E and a Y and an E spell I,
Pray what is a speller to do?

Then, if also an S and an I and a G
And an HED spell side,
There's nothing much left for a speller to do
But to go and commit siouxeyesighed.

Via Futility Closet

I before E

Here's the rhyme I learned when I was little to remind me when to write ie and when to write ei in those pesky words like receive and believe:

I before E
Except after C
Or when sounded like AY
As in beige and sleigh.

Some people learned "neighbor and weigh."